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CHARLES LAMB 



ESSAYS OF ELIA 



BY 

CHARLES LAMB 



PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS 
1893. 






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CONTENTS. 



The South-Sea House v 

Oxford in the Vacation '............ i6 

Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty V ears Ago*. '. *. *. *. ' *. * 24 

The Two Races of Men .'.'."!.*.'! 42 

New Year's Eve V. .V. V *_''*" ^^ 

Mrs. Battle' s Opinion on Whist . '. .* .* .* . . * * *. *. '. '. * .".*.'* * eg 

A Chapter on Ears Ia 

All Fools' Day '/.'/. ''.*.■.".';;;*; ■ ■ * 76 

A Quakers' Meeting *......*...* ' ' 8^ 

The Old and the New Schpol-Maste'r. *.*,*.'. .'.'.* 88 

Imperfect Sympathies . .^'". '[ jqq 

Witches, and Other Night Fears . K ..*.''..'.*.'.. *. 112 

Valentine's Day ...'....'. 121 

My Relations .....*.!]',!. 126 

Mackery End, in Hertfordshire nc 

My First Play . .^ \[ j^^ 

Modern Gallantry V..V.". ', ijg 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. ... .'. i c? 

Grace before Meat . j£q 

Dream-Children : A Revery *.'.'.", *.*.'.'.' . . ! ! .../.. 180 

Distant Correspondents 186 

The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers *.*.'.'.'.'.**.' 104 

A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis, 204 

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 215 

A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married 

People 22 c 

On Some of the Old Actors .V. 2')X 

On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century! ...... 251 

3 



4 Contents. 

PAGE. 

On the Acting of Munden 263 

Preface — By a Friend of the Late Elia 269 

Blakesmoor in H shire 275 

Poor Relations 282 

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading 292 

Stage Illusion 301 

To the Shade of Elliston 306 

Ellistoniana 310 

The Old Margate Hoy 318 

The Convalescent 329 

Sanity of True Genius 335 

Captain Jackson 340 

The Superannuated Man 346 

The Genteel Style in Writing 356 

Barbara S 363 

The Tombs in the Abbey 37 1 

Amicus Redivivus 375 

Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney 382 

Newspapers Thirty- Five Years Ago 393 

Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Produc- 
tions of Modern Art 403 

The Wedding 419 

Rejoicings Upon the New Year's Coming of Age. . . 427 

Old China 435 

The Child Angel ; A Dream 443 

Confessions of a Drunkard 447 

Popular Fallacies 459 



ELIA. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 



Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where 
thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends 
(supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) 
— to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, 
or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban 
retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a 
melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone 
edifice, to the left — where Threadneedle-street 
abuts upon Bishops-gate ? I dare say thou hast 
often admired its magnificent portals, ever gaping 
wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with 
cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of 
goers-in or comers-out, — a desolation something 
like Balclutha's.* 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of 
busy interests. The throng of merchants was 
here — the quick pulse of gain — and here some 
forms of business are still kept up, though the soul 
be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately 
porticos ; imposing staircases, offices roomy as 

* 1 passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. 

— OSSIAN, 

5 



6 .T660ai20 ot J6lfa. 

the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or 
thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks ; the 
still more sacred interiors of court and committee- 
rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- 
keepers — directors seated in form on solemn days 
(to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm- 
eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with 
tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy 
silver inkstands long since dry ; — the oaken 
wainscots hung with pictures of deceased gov- 
ernors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the 
two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ; 
— huge charts, which subsequent discoveries 
have antiquated ; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as 
dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama ! 
The long passages hung with buckets, appended, 
in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy 
any, short of the last, conflagration : — with vast 
ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and 
pieces-of-eight once lay, an '* unsunned heap," 
for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart 
withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered into 
air at the blast of the breaking of that famous 
Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it 
was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a mag- 
nificent relic ! What alteration may have been 
made in it since, I have had no opportunities of 
verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not 
freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face 
of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this 
time stagnates upon it. The moths that were 
then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day- 
books, have rested from their depredations, but 
other light generations have succeeded, making 



Zbc Soutb*Sea Ibouse. 7 

fine fretwork among their single and double 
entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a 
superfoetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that 
seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious 
finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the 
mode of bookkeeping in Queen Anne'5 reign ; 
or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil 
some of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, 
whose extent the petty peculators of our day 
look back upon with the same expression of in- 
credulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of 
rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern 
conspiracy contemplating the Titan sizeof Vaux's 
superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence 
and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, 
for a memorial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring 
and living commerce, — amid the fret and fever 
of speculation, — with the Bank, and the 'Change, 
and the India-House about thee, in the heyday of 
present prosperity, with their important faces, as 
it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbor out of 
business, — to the idle and merely contemplative, 
— to such as me, old house ! there is a charm in 
thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from busi- 
ness — an indolence almost cloistral — which is 
delightful 1 With what reverence have I paced 
thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide ! 
They spoke of the past :— the shade of some dead 
accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit 
by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and 
accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figur- 
ing. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three 
degenerate clerks of the present day could lift 



8 }&66a^d Ot JEM. 

from their enshrining shelves — with their old 
fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric inter- 
lacings — their sums in triple columniations, set 
down with formal superfluity of ciphers — with 
pious sentences at the beginning, without which 
our religious ancestors never ventured to open 
a book of business, or bill of lading — the costly 
vellum covers of some of them almost persuading 
us that we are got into some be//er library, — are 
very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can 
look upon these defunct dragoons with compla- 
cency. The heavy, odd-shaped, ivory-handled 
penknives (our ancestors had every thing on a 
larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good 
as any thing from Herculaneum. The pounce- 
boxes of our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South- 
Sea House — I speak of forty years back — had an 
air very different from those in the public offices 
that I have had to do with since. They partook 
of the genius of the place. 

They were mostly (for the establishment did 
not admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. 
Generally (for they had not much to do) persons of 
a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fash- 
ioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humor- 
ists, for they were of all descriptions ; and, not 
having been brought together in early life (which 
has a tendency to assimilate the members of cor- 
porate bodies to each other), but for the most part 
placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they 
necessarily carried into it their separate habits 
and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, as 
into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort 
of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. 



tXbe Soutb^Sea IDouse. 9 

Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more 
for show than for use. Yet pleasant fellows, full 
of chat,— and not a few among them had arrived 
at considerable proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a 
Cambro-Briton. He had something of the chol- 
eric complexion of his countrymen stamped on 
his visage, but was a worthy, sensible man at 
bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered 
and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember 
to have seen in caricatures of what was termed in 
my young days, Maccaronies, He was the last 
of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gibcat, 
over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see 
him making up his cash (as they call it) with 
tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about 
him was a defaulter ; in his hypochondry ready 
to imagine himself one ; haunted at least with the 
idea of the possibility of his becoming one ; his 
trustful visage clearing up a little over his roast 
neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his pict- 
ure still hangs, taken a little before his death by 
desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he 
had frequented for the last five and twenty years), 
but not attaining the meridian of its animation till 
evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. 
The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at 
the door with the stroke of the clock announcing 
six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the fam- 
ilies which this dear old bachelor gladdened with 
his presence. Then was his forte, his glorified 
hour ! How would he chirp, and expand, over a 
miifiin ! How would he dilate into secret history. 
His countrymen, Pennant himself in particu- 
lar, could not be more eloquent than he in relation 



10 jBeea^Q ot ;eua. 

to old and new London — the site of old theatres, 
churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosa- 
mond's Pond stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and 
the Conduit in Cheap — with many a pleasant 
anecdote, derived from paternal tradition, of those 
grotesque figures which Hogarth has immortalized 
in his picture oi Noon, — the worthy descendants 
of those heroic confessors who, flying to this coun- 
try from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and 
his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure religion 
in the sheltering obscurities of Hog Lane, and the 
vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He 
had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would 
have taken him for one, had you met him in one 
of the passages leading to Westminster Hall. By 
stoop, I mean that gentle bending of the body 
forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed 
to be the effect of an habitual condescending 
attention to the a.pplications of their inferiors. 
While he held you in converse, you felt strained 
to the height in the colloquy. The conference 
over, you were at leisure to smile at the compar- 
ative insignificance of the pretensions which had 
just awed you. His intellect was of the shallow- 
est order. It did not reach to a saw or a prov- 
erb. His mind was in its original state of white 
paper. A sucking-babe might have posed him. 
What was it then .? Was he rich .? Alas ! no. 
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his 
wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear 
all was not well at all times within. She had a 
neat meagre person, which it was evident she had 
not sinned in over-pampering ; but in its veins 
was noble blood. She traced her descent, by 



Zbc Soutb*Sea Ibouge* n 

some labyrinth of relationship which I never 
thoroughly understood, — much less can explain 
with any heraldic certainty at this time of day, to 
the illustrious but unfortunate house of Derwent- 
water. This was the secret of Thomas' stoop. This 
was the thought — the sentiment — the bright soli- 
tary star of your lives — ye mild and happy pair — 
which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in 
the obscurity of your station ! This was to you 
instead of riches, instead of rank, instead of glitter- 
ing attainments ; and it was worth them all to- 
gether. You insulted none with it ; but while 
you wore it as a piece of defensive armor only, 
no insult likewise could reach you through it. 
Deciis et solamen. 

Of quite another stamp was the then account- 
ant, John Tipp. He neither pretended to high 
blood, nor, in good truth, cared one fig about the 
matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest 
character in the world, and himself the greatest 
accountant in it." Yet John was not without his 
hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. 
He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the 
Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream and 
scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official 
rooms in Threadneedle-street, which, without 
any thing very substantial appended to them, 
were enough to enlarge a man's notions of him- 
self that lived in them (I know not who is the 
occupier of them now), resounded fortnightly to 
the notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our 
ancestors would have called them, culled from 
club-rooms and orchestras — chorus-singers — first 
and second violoncellos — double basses — and 
clarionets, — who ate his cold mutton and drank 



12 jEssa^s Qt BUa. 

his punch and praised his ear. He sate like 
Lord Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp 
was quite another sort of creature. Thence all 
ideas that were purely ornamental were banished. 
You could not speak of any thing romantic with- 
out rebuke. Politics were excluded. A news- 
paper was thought too refined and abstracted. 
The whole duty of man consisted in writing off 
dividend warrants. The striking of the annual 
balance in the company's books (which, perhaps, 
differed from the balance of last year in the sum 
of 25/. IS. 6d.) occupied his days and nights for a 
month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the 
deadness of things (as they call them in the city) 
in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a return 
of the old stirring days when South-Sea hopes 
were young (he was indeed equal to the wielding 
of any of the most intricate accounts of the most 
flourishing company in these or those days) ; but 
to a genuine accountant the difference of proceeds 
is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as dear 
to his heart as the thousands which stand before 
it. He is the true actor, who, whether his 
part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with 
like intensity. With Tipp form was every thing. 
His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled 
with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than 
his heart. He made the best executor in the 
world ; he was plagued with incessant executor- 
ships accordingly, which excited his spleen and 
soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would 
swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, 
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like 
the grasp of the dying hand that commended 
their interests to his protection. With all this 



Zbc Soutb*Sea Ibouse. 13 

there was about him a sort of timidity (his few 
enemies used to give it a worse name), a something 
which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, 
if you please, a little on this side of the heroic. 
Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John 
Tipp with a sufficient measure of the principle of 
self-preservation. There is a cowardice which 
we do not despise, because it has nothing base or 
treacherous in its elements ; it betrays itself, not 
you ; it is mere temperament ; the absence of the 
romantic and enterprising ; it sees a lion in the 
way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find 
quarrel in a straw," when some supposed honor 
is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a 
stage-coach in his life, or leaned against the 
rails of a balcony, or walked upon the ridge of a 
parapet, or looked down a precipice, or let off a 
gun, or went upon a water party, or would 
willingly let you go, if he could have helped it ; 
neither was it recorded of him that, for lucre or 
for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or prin- 
ciple. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty 
dead, in whom common qualities become un- 
common ? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the 
wit, the polished man of letters, the autJior, of the 
South-Sea House, who never enteredst thy office 
in a morning, or quittedst it in midday (what 
didst thou in an office ?) without some quirk that 
left a sting ? Thy jibes and thy jokes are now 
extinct, or survive but in two forgotten volumes, 
which I had the good fortune to rescue from a 
stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found 
thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy 
wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days — 



14 J606ai26 of J6lia» 

thy topics are staled by the ''new-born gauds" 
of the time, — but great thou used to be in Public 
Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham and 
Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and 
Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended 
in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious 
colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Saw- 
bridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and 
Richmond, — and such small politics. 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more 
obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattle-headed 
Plumer. He was descended — not in a right line, 
reader (for his lineal pretensions, like his per- 
sonal, favored a little of the sinister bend) — from 
the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave 
him out, and certain family features not a little 
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter 
Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in 
his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen 
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the 
fine old whig still living, who has represented the 
county in so many successive parliaments, and 
has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flour- 
ished in George the Second's days, and was the 
same who was summoned before the House of 
Commons about a business of franks, with the 
old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read of 
it in Johnson's "Life of Cave.*' Cave came off 
cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer 
did nothing to discountenance the rumor. He 
rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all 
gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family 
pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and 
sang gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest. 



Zbc Soutb:=Sea Ibouse. 15 

mild, childlike, pastoral M. ; a flute's breathing 
less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian mel- 
odies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst 
chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished 
Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more 
lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy 
sire was old surly M., the unapproachable 
church-warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not 
what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, 
gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only un- 
fortunate in thy ending, which should have been 
mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes 
rise up, but they must be mine in private ; — already 
I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; 
— else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, 
who existed in trying the question and bought 
litigations ? — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn 
Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might 
have deduced the law of gravitation. How pro- 
foundly would he nib a pen — with what delibera- 
tion would he wet a wafer ! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rat- 
tling fast over me — it is proper to have done 
with this solemn mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee 
all this while .? — peradventure the very names, 
which I have summoned up before thee, are fan- 
tastic — insubstantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and 
old John Naps of Greece. 

Be satisfied that something answering to them 
has had a being. Tlieir importance is from the 
past. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 



Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of 
this article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, 
with cursory eye, (which, while it reads, seems 
as though it read not), never fails to consult the 
quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces 
some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollett — 
methinks I hear you exclaim. Reader, Who is Elia ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with 
some half-forgotten humors of some old clerks 
defunct, in an old house of business, long since 
gone to decay, doubtless you have already set 
me down in your mind as one of the self-same 
college— a votary of the desk — a notched and 
cropt scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, 
as certain sick people are said to do, through a 
quill. 

Well, I do ^nize something of the sort. I con- 
fess that it is niy humor, my fancy — in the fore- 
part of the day, when the mind of your man of 
letters requires some relaxation (and none better 
than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent 
from his beloved studies) to while away some 
good hours of my time in the contemplation of 
indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered 
or otherwise. In the first place . . . and then 
it sends you home with such increased appetite to 
your books . . . not to say, that your outside 
i6 



®3ttorD fn tbe tDacatfon* 17 

sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive 
into them, most kindly and naturally, the impres- 
sion of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the very 
parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the 
settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, 
that has plodded all the morning among the cart- 
rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets 
so at its ease over the flowery-carpet ground of 
a midnight dissertation. It feels its promotion. 
... . So that you see, upon the whole, the liter- 
ary dignity oiElia is very little, if at all, compro- 
mised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com- 
modities incidental to the life of a pubHc office, I 
would be thought bUnd to certain flaws, which 
a cunning carper might be able to pick in this 
Joseph s vest. And here I must have leave, in 
the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and 
doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory 
interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through 
the four seasons, — the red-leiter days, now become, 
to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There 
was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as 
long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remem- 
ber their effigies, by the same token, in the old 
Basket Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his 
uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the trouble- 
some act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by 
Spagnoletti. I honored them all, and could almost 
have wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much 
did we love to keep holy memories sacred ; — only 
methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the 



1 8 ' Bssa^s of Blia. '" 

bef/er /ude with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their 
sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy- 
day between them — as an economy unworthy of 
the dispensation. 

These were briglit visitations in a scholar's and 
a clerk's life — "far off their coming shone." — I 
was as good as an almanac in those days. I could 
have told you such a saint's day falls out next 
week, or the week after. Peradventure the Epiph- 
any, by some periodical infelicity, would, once 
in six years, merge in the Sabbath. Now am I 
little better than one of the profane. Let me not 
be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil supe- 
riors, who have judged the further observation of 
these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. 
Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, 
if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, 
been first sounded — but I am wading out of my 
depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of ^^i^ 
civil and ecclesiastical authority — I am plain Elial^ ^ 
,^iv\*'l^no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though a{ ' 
present in the thick of their books, here in the heart 
of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. 
To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded 
in his young years of the sweet food of academic 
institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away 
a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universi- 
ties. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, 
falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks 
unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or 
standing I please. 1 seem admitted ad eundeni. 
L fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the 
chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In 
moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. • 



©ifocd in tbc IDacatlott* 19 

When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentlemrfti 
Commoner. In graver moments I proceed Mas- 
ter of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much un- 
like that respectable character. I have seen your 
dim-eyed vergers, and bedmakers in spectacles, 
drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistak- 
ing me for something of the sort. I go about in 
black, which favors the notion. Only in Christ 
Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to 
pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, 
— the tali trees of Christ's, the groves of Mag- 
dalen ! The halls deserted, and with open doors 
inviting one to slip in unperceived, and pay a 
devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Bene- 
factress (that should have been ours), whose por- 
trait seems to smile upon their overlooked beads- 
man, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take 
a peep in by the way at the butteries, and sculler- 
ies, redolent of antique hospitality ; the immense 
caves of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial re- 
cesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked four 
centuries ago ; and spits which have cooked for 
Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister among the 
dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagina- 
tion, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity ! thou w^ondrous charm, what art 
thou } that being nothing, art every thing ! When 
thou wert, thou were not antiquity— then thou 
wert nothing, but hadst a remoter aniiquity, as 
thou calledst it, to look back to with blind vener- 
ation ; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, 
modern > What mystery lurks in this retrover- 
sion .? or what half Januses * are we, that cannot 

* Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 



20 JBssa^e of IBM* 

iQpk forward with the same idolatry with which 
we forever revert ! The mighty future is nothing, 
being every thing ! the past is every thing being 
nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages P Surely the sun rose 
as brightly then as now, and man got him to his 
work in the morning. Why is it we can never 
hear mention of them without an accompanying 
feeling as though a palpable obscure had dimmed 
the face of things, and that our ancestors wan- 
dered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do 
most arride and solace me are thy repositories of 
mouldeiTng learning, thy shelves. 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It 
seems as though all the souls of all the writers that 
have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians 
were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle 
state. I do not want to handle, to profane the 
leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon 
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, 
walking amid their foliage ; and the odor of their 
old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the 
first bloom of those scieiitial apples which grew 
amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder 
repose of MSS. Those van'ce lectiones, so tempt- 
ing to the more erudite palates, do but disturb 
and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean 
raker. The credit of the three witnesses might 
have slept un impeached for me. I leave these 
curiosities to Porson, and toG. D. — whom, by the 
way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten 
archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored 
press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he 



©iforD in tbe IDacation, 21 

IS grown almost into a book. He stood as pas- 
sive as one by the side of the old shelves. I 
longed to new coat him in russia, and assign him 
his place. He might have mustered for a tall 
Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of 
learning. No inconsiderable portion of his moder- 
ate fortune, I apprehend, is consumed in journeys 
between them and Cliffords-inn — where, like a 
dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his 
unconscious abode, amid an incongruous as- 
sembly of attorneys, attorney's clerks, apparitors, 
promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he 
sits " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of 
the law pierce him not — the winds of litigation 
blow over his humble chambers — the hard sheriffs 
officer moves his hat as he passes — legal nor ille- 
gal discourtesy touches him — none thinks of offer- 
ing violence or injustice to him — you would as 
soon '' strike an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a 
course of laborious years, in an investigation into 
all curious matter connected with the two Univer- 
sities, and has lately lit upon a MS. collection of 

charters, relative to C , by which he hopes to 

settle some disputed points, particularly that long 
controversy between them as to priority of foun- 
dation. The ardor with which he engages in these 
liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all 
the encouragement it deserved, either here, or 

at C . Your caputs and heads of colleges 

care less than anybody else about these ques- 
tions. Contented to suck the milky fountains of 
their Alma Maters, without inquiring into the 
venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold 



22 jE6sai?6 ot jElfa. 

such curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. 
They have their good glebe lands in manu, and 
care not much to rake into the title deeds. I 
gather at least so much from other sources, for D. 
is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I inter- 
rupted him. A priori it was not very probable that 
we should have met in Oriel. But D. would have 
done the same had I accosted him on the sudden 
in his own walks in Clifford's-inn, or in the Temple. 
In addition to a provoking short-sightedness (the 
effect of late studies and watchings at the mid- 
night oil), D. is the most absent of men. He 
made a call the other morning at our friend M.'s 
in Bedford Square, and, finding nobody at home, 
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen 
and ink, with great exactitude of purpose he 
enters me his name in the book — which ordina- 
rily lies about in such places, to record the failures 
of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes 
his leave with many ceremonies and professions 
of regret. Some two or three hours after, his 
walking destinies returned him into the same 
neighborhood again, and again the quiet image 
of the fireside circle at M. 's — Mrs. M. presiding 
at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her 
side — striking irresistibly on his fancy, he makes 
another call (forgetting that they were ''cer- 
tainly not to return from the country before that 
day week "), and disappointed a second time, 
inquires for pen and paper as before ; again the 
book is brought, and in the line just above that 
in which he is about to print his second name 
(his re-script) — ^his first name (scarce dry) — looks 
out upon him like another Sosia, or as if a man 



©itorD in tbe IDacatlon. 23 

should suddenly encounter his own duplicate ! 
The effect may be conceived. D. made^ many a 
good resolution against any such lapses in future. 
I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 
• For with G. D. — to be absent from the body is 
sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be pres- 
ent with the Lord. At the very time when per- 
sonally encountering -thee, he passes on with no 
recognition— or, being stopped, starts like a thing 
surprised— at that moment, reader, he is on 
Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with 
Plato— or, with Harrington, framing ''immortal 
commonwealths '—devising some plan of amel- 
ioration to thy country, or thy species— peradvent- 
ure meditating some individual kindness or court- 
esy to be done to thee thyself, the returning con- 
sciousness of which made him to start so guiltily 
at thy obtruded personal presence. 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best 
in such places as these. He cares not much for 
Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton, at 
Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The Cam and the 
Isis are to him "better than all the waters of 
Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and 
good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable 
Mountains ; and when he goes about with you to 
show you the halls and colleges, you think you 
have with you the Interpreter at the House Beau- 
tiful. 




CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY 
YEARS AGO. 



In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or 
two since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old 
school,* such as it was, or now appears to him 
to have been, between the years 1782 and 1789. 
It happens, very oddly, that my own standing 
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his : 
and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm 
for the cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring 
together whatever can be said in praise of them, 
dropping all the other side of the argument most 
ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recol- 
lect that he had some peculiar advantages, which 
I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His 
friends lived in town, and were near at hand ; 
and he had the privilege of going to see them, al- 
most as often as he wished, through some invidious 
distinction which was denied to us. The present 
worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can ex- 
plain how that happened. He had his tea and 
hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening 
upon our quarter-of-a-penny-loaf — our crug — 
moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden 

* Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 
24 



CbtiBV6 1bO0pftaU 25 

piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it 
was poured from. Our Monday's milk porridge, 
blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Satur- 
day coarse and choking, were enriched for him 
with a slice of " extraordinary bread and butter," 
from the hot loaf of the Temple. The Wednes- 
day's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — 
(we had three banyan to four meat days in a 
week) was endeared to his palate with a lump of 
double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make 
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cin- 
namon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, 
quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as 
caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in 
a pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton 
scrags on Fridays — and rather more savory, but 
grudging portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted 
or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which ex- 
cited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs 
in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot plate 
of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (ex- 
otics unknown to our palates), cooked in the 
paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him 
daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember the good 
old relative (in whom love forbade pride), squat- 
ting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of 
the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher re- 
gale than those cates which the ravens ministered 
to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions 
of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the 
bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the 
manner of its bringing ; sympathy for those who 
were too many to share in it ; and, at top of all, 
hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) pre- 
dominant, breaking down the stony fences of 



26 Bssaigs of BUa. 

shame, and awkwardness, and a troubled over- 
consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents and 
those who should care for me, were far away. 
Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they 
could reckon upon being kind to me in the great 
city, after a little forced notice, which they had 
the grace to take of me on my first arrival in 
town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They 
seemed to them to recur too often, though I 
thought them few enough ; and one after another 
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among 
six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his 
early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to 
have toward it in those unfledged years ! How, 
in my dreams, would my native town (far in the 
west) come back, with its church and trees, and 
faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in the 
anguish of my heart, exclaim upon sweet Calne 
in \Viltshire. 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions 
left by the recollection of those friendless holi- 
days. The long warm days of summer never 
return but they bring with them a gloom from the 
haunting memory of those whole-day leaves, when 
by some strange arrangement we were turned 
out, for the livelong day, upon our own hands, 
whether we had friends to go to, or none. I 
remember those bathing excursions to the New 
River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I 
think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking 
lad, and did not much care for such water- 
pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth 
into the fields ; and strip under the first warmth 



C briars IbospltaL 27 

of the sun, and wanton like young dace in the 
streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which 
those of us that were penniless (our scanty morn- 
ing crust long since exhausted) had not the means 
of allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, and 
the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had 
nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty 
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and 
the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon 
them ! — How faint and languid, finally, we would 
return, toward nightfall, to our desired morsel, 
half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our 
uneasy liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowl- 
ing about the streets objectless — shivering at cold 
windows of print-shops, to extract a little amuse- 
ment ; or haply, as a last resort in the hopes of a 
little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit 
(where our individual faces should be as well 
known to the warden as those of his own charges) 
to the Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by 
courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title 
to admission. 

L. 's governor (so we called the patron who pre- 
sented us to the foundation) lived in a manner 
under his paternal roof. Any complaint which 
he had to make was sure of being attended to. 
This was understood at Christ's, and was an 
effectual screen to him against the severity of 
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The 
oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sick- 
ening to call to recollection. I have been called 
out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the 
coldest winter nights — and this not once, but 
night after night — in my shirt, to receive the dis- 



28 Mesn^e of BUa, 

cipline of a leathern thong-, with eleven other suf- 
ferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, 
when there had been any talking heard after we 
were gone to bed, to make the last six beds in 
the dormitory, where the youngest children of us 
slept, answerable for an offence they neither dared 
to commit, nor had the power to hinder. The 
same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of 
us from the fires, when our feet were perishing 
with snow ; and, under the cruelest penalties, 
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water when 
we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with 
the season and the day's sports. 

There was one H., who, I learned, in after days, 
was seen expiating some maturer offence in the 
hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this 
might be the planter of that name, who suffered — 
at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts — some few years 
since ? My friend Tobin was the benevolent in- 
strument of bringing him to the gallows.) This 
petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had 
offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly 
starved forty of us, with exactmg contributions, 
to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young 
ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the 
connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young 
flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and 
keep upon the leac^s of the ward, as they called 
our dormitories. This game went on for better 
than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare 
well but he must cry roast meat — happier than 
Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own 
counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his spe- 
cies in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the 
fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs 



Cbtfst's IboBpltaL 29 

proclaim his good fortune to the world below ; 
and, laying out his simple throat, blew such a 
ram's-horn blast as (toppling down the walls of 
his own Jericho) set concealment any longer at 
defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain 
attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never understood 
that the patron underwent any censure on the 
occasion. This was in the stewardship of L. 's 
admired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can L. 
have forgotten the cool impunity with which the 
nurses used to carry away openly, in open plat- 
ters, for their own tables, one out of two of every 
hot joint, which the careful matron had been 
seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? 
These things were daily practised in that magnifi- 
cent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur 
since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand 
paintings "by Verrio, and others," with w^hich 
it is "hung round and adorned. " But the sight 
of sleek, well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, 
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, 
or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of 
our provisions carried away before our faces by 
harpies ; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan 
in the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school 
to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets 
it down to some superstition. But these unctuous 
morsels are never grateful to young palates (chil- 
dren are universally fat-haters), and in strong, 
coarse, boiled meats, unsalled, are detestable. A 
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a.g/ioul, and 



30 JBBsa^s of BUa* 

held in equal detestation. — suffered under 

the imputation : 

'Twas said 
He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to 
gather up the remnants left at his table (not 
many, nor very choice fragments you may credit 
me), — and, in an especial manner, these disrep- 
utable morsels, which he would convey away, 
and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his 
bedside. None saw when he ate them. It was 
rumored that he privately devoured them in the 
night. He was watched, but no traces of such 
midnight practices were discoverable. Some 
reported that on leave-days he had been seen to 
carry out of the bounds a large blue check hand- 
kerchief, full of something. This, then, must be 
the accursed thing. Conjecture next was at work 
to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some 
said he sold it to the beggars. This belief 
generally prevailed. He went about moping. 
None spake to him. No one would play with 
him. He was excommunicated ; put out of the 
pale of the school. He was too powerful a boy 
to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of 
that negative punishment which is more grievous 
than many stripes. Still he persevered. At 
length he was observed by two of his school- 
fellows, who were determined to get at the 
secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that 
purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such 
as there exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, 
which are let out to various scales of pauperism 
with open door and a common staircase. After 



Cbciat'e 1bo0pftaL 31 

him. they silently slunk in and followed by stealth 
up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, 
which was opened by an aged woman, meanly 
clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. 
The informers had secured their victim. They 
had him in their toils. Accusation was formally 
preferred, and retribution most signal was looked 
for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this 
happened a little after my time), with that pa- 
tient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, 
determined to investigate the matter before he 
proceeded to sentence. The result was, that the 
supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers 
of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the 

parents of , an honest couple come to decay 

— whom this seasonable supply had, in all prob- 
ability, saved from mendicancy ; and that this 
young stork, at the expense of his own good 
name, had all this while been only feeding the 
old birds ! The governors on this occasion, much 
to their honor, voted a present relief to the fam- 
ily of , and presented him with a silver 

medal. The lesson which the steward read upon 
RASH JUDGMENT, ou the occasiou of publicly de- 
livering the medal to , I believe would 

not be lost upon his auditory. I had left school 

then, but I well remember . He was a 

tall, shambling youth, with a cast in his eye, not 
at all calculated to conciliate hostile prejudices. 
I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. 
I think I heard he did not do quite so well by 
himself as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad, and the sight of a 
boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting 
on the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to 



32 :i6s6ag6 ot JBlia* 

assuage the natural terrors of initiation. I was 
of tender years, barely turned of seven, and had 
only read of such things in books or seen them 
but in dreams. I was told he had ru7t away. 
This was the punishment for the first offence. 
As a novice I was soon after taken to see the 
dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam 
cells, where a boy could just lie at his length 
upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was 
afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, let 
in askance from a prison orifice at top, barely 
enough to read by. Here the poor boy was 
locked in by himself all day, without sight of any 
but the porter, who brought him his bread and 
water — who might not speak to him ; — or of the 
beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to 
receive his periodical chastisement, which was 
almost welcome, because it separated him for a 
brief interval from solitude ; — and here he was shut 
up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any 
sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves 
and superstition incident to his time of life might 
subject him to.* This was the penalty for the 
second offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see 
what became of him in the next degree ^ 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offend- 
er, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed 
irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn 
auto da/e, arrayed in uncouth and most appalling 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, 
accordingly, at length convinced the governors of the impol- 
icy of this part of the sentence ; and the midnight torture to 
the spirits was dispensed with. This fancy of dungeons for 
children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; for which (saving 
the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks I could willingly 
spit upon his statue. 



QbtieVs Ibospital. 33 

attire — all trace of his late '' watch et weeds" 
carefully" effaced, he was exposed in a jacket re- 
sembling those which London lamp-lighters for- 
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The 
effect of this divestiture was such as the ingenious 
devisors of it could have anticipated. With his 
pale and frighted features, it was as if some of 
those disfigurements in Dante had seized upon 
him. In this disguisement he was brought into 
the hall i^L.'s favorite slate?'oom), where awaited 
him the whole number of his school-fellows, whose 
joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to 
share no more ; the awful presence of the steward, 
to be seen for the last time ; of the executioner 
beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; 
and of two faces more, of direr import, because 
never but in these extremities visible. These 
were governors, two of whom, by choice or char- 
ter, were always accustomed to officiate at these 
Ultima Supplicia ; not to mitigate (so at least we 
understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. 
Old Bamber Gascoigne and Peter Aubert, I re- 
member, were colleagues on one occasion, when 
the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy 
was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. 
The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, 
long and stately. The lictor accompanied the 
criminal quite round the hall. We were generally 
too faint with attending to the previous disgusting 
circumstances to make accurate report with Our 
eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. 
Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and 
livid. After scourging, he was made over in his 
San Benito to his friends, if he had any (but com- 
monly such poor runagates were friendless), or 
3 



34 JE63n^6 of :!£Ua. 

to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect of 
the scene, had his station allotted to him on the 
outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off 
so often as to spoil the general mirth of the com- 
munity. We had plenty of exercise and recreation 
af/er school hours ; and for myself, I must confess 
that I was never happier than m them. The 
Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held, 
in the same room ; and an imaginary line only 
divided their bounds. Their character Vv^as as 
different as that of the inhabitants on the two 
sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James Boyer 
was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. Matthew 
Field presided over that portion of the apartment 
of which I had the good fortune to be a member. 
We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked 
and did just what we pleased, and nobody mo- 
lested us. We carried an accidence, or a grammar, 
for form ; but for any trouble it gave us, we might 
take two years in getting through the verbs depo- 
nent, and another two in forgetting all that we 
had learned about them. There was now and 
then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you 
had not learned it, a brush across the shoulders 
(just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remon- 
strance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth 
he wielded the cane with no great good-will-^ — 
holding it "like a dancer." It looked in his 
hands rather like an emblem, than an instrument 
of authority ; and an emblem, too, he was 
ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did 
pot care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set 
any great consideration upon the value of juvenile 
time. He canie among us, now and then, Iput 



Cbrfst'e 1b03pital. 35 

often stayed away whole days from us ; and when 
he came, it made no difference to us — he had his 
private room to retire to, the short time he stayed, 
to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth 
and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, 
without being beholden to " insolent Greece or 
haughty Rome," that passed current among us — ■ 
" Peter Wilkins " — "The adventures of the Hon. 
Captain Robert Boyle" — "The Fortunate Blue 
Coat Boy " — and the like. Or we cultivated a 
turn for mechanic and scientific operations, mak- 
ing little sun-dials of paper, or weaving those in- 
genious parentheses called cal-cradles ; or making 
dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or 
studying the art military over that laudable game, 
" French and English," and a hundred other such 
devices to pass avv'^ay the time — mixing the useful 
with the agreeable — as would have made the souls 
of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen 
us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest 
divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the 
gentlema7i, the schola?-, and the Christian ; but, I 
know not how, the first ingredient is generally 
found to be the predominating dose in the com- 
position. He was engaged in gay parties, or with 
his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he 
should have been attending upon us. He had for 
many years the classical charge of a hundred 
children, during the four or five first years of their 
education ; and his very highest form seldom pro- 
ceeded further than two or three of the introduc- 
tory fables of Phsedrus. How things were suf- 
fered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who 
was the proper person to have remedied these 



36 Bsaa^s ot Ella. 

abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy 
in interfering in a province not strictly his own. 
I have not been without my suspicions, that he 
was not altogether displeased at the contrast we 
presented to his end of the school. We were a 
sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would 
sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow 
arodof the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic 
grin, observe to one of his upper boys " how neat 
and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale stu- 
dents were battering their brains over Xenophon 
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined 
by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our 
ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the 
secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but 
the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders 
rolled innocuous for us ; his storms came near, 
but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's 
miracle, while all around were drenched, our 
fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the better 
scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage in 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without 
something of terror allaying their gratitude ; the 
remembrance of Field comes back with all the 
soothing images of indolence, and summer slum- 
bers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, 
and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a "play- 
ing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdic- 
tion of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have 
said) to understand a little of his system. We 
occasionally heard sounds of the Uliilanies, and 
caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid 
pedant. His English style was crampt to barbar- 

* Cowley. 



Cbri6t'6 1Do0pltal. 37 

ism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged 
him to those periodical flights) were grating as 
scrannel pipes. *^ He would laugh, ay, and heart- 
ily, but then it must be at Flaccus' quibble about 
Rex — or at the tristis severitas in vultu, or iiispicere 
in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, which at their 
first broaching could hardly have had vis enough 
to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both 
pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, 
smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. 
The other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, 
denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to 
the school, when he made his morning appearance 
in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet ex- 
pounded surer. J. B, had a heavy hand. - I have 
known him double his knotty fist at a poor trem- 
bling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its 
lips) with a "Sirrah, do you presume to set your 
wits at me .? " — Nothing was more common than to 
see him make a headlong entry into the school- 
room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with 
turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, "Od's 
my life, sirrah, "(his favorite adjuration) " I have a 
great mind to whip you," — then, with as sudden a 
retracting impulse, fling back into his lair — and, 
after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during 

* In this and every thing B. was the antipodes of his coad- 
jutor. While the former was digging his brains for crude 
anthems, worth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentle- 
manly fancy in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little 
dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus and 
Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of 
literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not 
give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of haif- 
compliment, half -irony, that it was too classical for representor 
tion. 



38 JEssa^s of iBUh* 

which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the 
context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his 
imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's 
Litany, with the expletory yell, — "and I will 
too ! " — In his gentler moods, when the rahidiis 
furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious 
method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to him- 
self, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, 
at the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash be- 
tween ; which in those times, when parliarnentc^ 
oratory was most at a height and flourishmg in 
these realms, was not calculated to impress the 
patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces 
of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known 
to fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll, 
squinting W. — having been caught putting the 
inside of the master's desk to a use for which the 
architect had clearly not designed it, to justify 
himself, with great simplicity averred that lie did. 
7iot knoiv thai the thing had been for ewarned. This 
exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to 
the oral or declaratory , struck so irresistibly upon 
the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue him- 
self not excepted) — that remission was unavoid- 
able. 

L. has given credit to B. 's great merits as an 
instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro- 
nounced a more i ntelli.gj'ible and ample encomium 
on them. The author of the Country Spectator 
doubts not to compare him with the ablest teach- 
ers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him 
better than with the pious ejaculation of C, when 
he heard that his old master was on his death-bed : 
"Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and 



Cbrist's IbospltaU 39 

may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys 
all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach 
his sublunary infirmities. " 

Under him were many good and sound scholars 
bred. First Grecian of my time was Lancelot 
Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since 
Co-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) 
with Dr. T e. 

What an edifying spectacle did this brace of 
friends present to those who remembered the anti- 
socialities of their predecessors ! You never met 
the one by chance m the street without a wonder, 
which was quickly dissipated by the almost im- 
mediate sub-appearance of the other. Generally 
arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for 
each other the toilsome duties of their profession, 
and when, in advanced age, one found it conven- 
ient to retire, the other was not long in discover- 
ing that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. 
Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same 
arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen 
helped it to turn over the ''Cicero De Amicitia," 
or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the 
young heart even then was burning to anticipate ! 
Co-Grecian with S. was Th. , who has since exe- 
cuted with ability various diplomatic functions at 
the Northern courts. Th. was a tall, dark, satur- 
nine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. 
Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now 
Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in 
his teens. He has the reputation of an e xcellen t 
critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spec- 
tator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against 
Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in 
India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) suffi- 



40 JBesa^Q ot Blia. 

ciently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as 
primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be 
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- 
Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home in- 
stitutions, and the church which those fathers 
watered. The manners of M. at school, though 
firm, were mild and unassuming. Next to M. (if 
not senior to him) was Richards, author of the 
Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford 
prize poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. Then fol- 
lowed poor S., ill-fated M. ! of these the Muse is 
silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 

Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in 
the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery 
column before thee — the dark pillar not yet 
turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Met- 
aphysician, Bard ! How have I seen the casual 
passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced 
with admiration (while he weighed the dispropor- 
tion between the speech and the garb of the young 
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep in- 
tonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plo- 
tinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not 
pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting 
Homer in his Greek, or Pindar — while the walls 
of the old Gray Friars re-echoed to the accents of 
the inspired charity-boy / Many were the "wit- 
combats " (to dally awhile with the words of old 
Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G., which two 
I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an 
English man-of-war; Master Coleridge, like the 
former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but 
slow in his performances. C. V. Le G., with the 



QMsVs 1b06pftal. 41 

English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in 
sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and 
take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of 
his wit and invention. 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly' for- 
gotten, Allen, with the cordial smile and still 
more cordial laugh, with which thou were wont 
to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy cognition 
of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipa- 
tion of some more material and, peradventure, 
practical one of thine own. Extinct are those 
smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with 
which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the 
school) in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou 
didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, 
who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning 
tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy 
angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible 

"Z>/ ," for a gentler greeting — '^ bless thy 

handsome face! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, 
and the friends of Elia — the junior Le G. and F., 
who, impelled, the former by a roving temper, 
the latter by too quick a sense of neglect — ill 
capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are 
sometimes subject to in our seats of learning — • 
exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; per- 
ishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of 
Salamanca: — Le G. , sanguine, volatile, sweet- 
natured ; F. , dogged, faithful, anticipative of in- 
sult, warm-hearted, with something of the old 
Roman height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr., the present master of 
Hertford, with Marmaduke T. , mildest of Mission- 
aries — and both my good friends still — close the 
catalogue of Grecians in my time. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 



The human species, according to the best the- 
ory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct 
races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. 
To these two original diversities may be reduced 
all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and 
Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. 
All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and 
Medes, and Elamites," flock hither and do natu- 
rally fall in with one or other of these primary dis- 
tinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, 
which I choose to designate as the great race, is 
discernible in their figure, port, and a certain 
instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born de- 
graded. *' He shall serve his brethren." There 
is something in the air of one of this cast, lean 
and suspicious ; contrasting with the open, trust- 
ing, generous manners of the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers 
of all ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard 
Steele — our late incomparable Brinsley — what a 
family likeness in all four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your 
borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reli- 
ance on Providence doth he manifest, — taking no 
more thought than lilies ! What contempt for 
money, — accounting it (yours and mine espe- 
42 



Z\)c Zvoo IRaces ot /Bbem 43 

daily) no better than dross ! What a liberal con- 
founding of those pedantic distinctions of meum 
and ^uum / or rather, what a noble simplification 
of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these sup- 
posed opposites into one clear, intelligible pro- 
noun adjective !— What near approaches doth he 
make to the primitive com7num(y,— to the extent 
of one half of the principle at least. 

He is the true taxer who '* calleth all the world 
up to be taxed " ; and the distance is as vast be- 
tween him and one of us, as subsisted between 
the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew- 
that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem !— His 
exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary 
air 1 So far removed from your sour parochial or 
state gatherers,— those inkhorn varlets, who carry 
their want of welcome in their faces ! He Com- 
eth to you with a smile, and troubleth you with 
no receipt ; confining himself to no set season. 
Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy 
Michael. He appHeth the lene tormentum of a 
pleasant look to your purse,— which to that gen- 
tle warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally 
as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and 
wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which 
never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh handsomely 
at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom 
he delighteth to honor, struggles with destiny ; 
he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, U 
man ordained to lend— that thou lose not in the 
end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion prom- 
ised. Combine not preposterously in thine own 
person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — 
but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, 
meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a 



44 ;iB30as5 ot Blia. 

handsome sacrifice ! See how light he makes of 
it ! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon 
my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph 
Bigod, Esq., who parted this life on Wednesday 
evening; dying, as he had lived, without much 
trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from 
mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore 
held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions 
and sentiments he belied not the stock to which 
he pretended. Early in life he found himself 
invested with ample revenues : which, with that 
noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as 
inherent in men of the great race, he took almost 
immediate measures entirely to dissipate and 
bring to nothing ; for there is something revolting 
in the idea of a king holding a private purse ; and 
the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus fur- 
nished by the very act of disfurnishment : getting 
rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more 
apt (as one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great 
enterprise, '' borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress 
throughout this island, it has been calculated that 
he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under con- 
tribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exag- 
gerated ; — but haAnng had the honor of accom- 
panying my frieiid divers times, in his perambula- 
tions about this vast city, I own I was greatly 
struck at first with the prodigious number of faces 
we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaint- 



'(Ibc tTwo TRaces ot /iRen. 



45 



ance with us. He was one day so obliging- as to 
explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were 
his tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentle- 
men, his good friends (as he was pleased to 
express himself), to whom he had occasionally 
been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did 
no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride 
in numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed 
pleased to be " stocked with so fair a herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how he 
contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He 
did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often 
in his mouth, that ' ' money kept longer than three 
days' stinks." So he made use of it while it was 
fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an 
excellent toss-pot) : some he gave away, the rest 
he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it 
violently from him — as boys do burrs, or as if it 
had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, or 
deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or 
he would bury it (where he would never seek it 
again) by a river's side under some bank, which 
(he would facetiously observe) paid no interest — 
but out away from him it must go peremptorily, 
as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, while it 
was sweet. He never missed it. The streams 
were perennial which fed his fisc. When new 
supplies became necessary, the first person that 
had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or 
stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. 
For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He 
had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, 
a bald forehead, just touched with gray (caiia 
fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found 
none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to 



46 iSesa^s ot JSlia* 

the grea/ race, I would put it to the most untheo- 
rizing reader, who may at times have disposable 
coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repug- 
nant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such 
a one as I am describing, than to say 7io to a poor 
petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, 
by his mumping visnomy, tells you, that he ex- 
pects nothing better ; and, therefore, whose pre- 
conceived notions and expectations you do in 
reality so much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man, his fiery glow of 
heart ; his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, 
how idea/ he was ; how great at the midnight 
hour ; and when I compare with him the com- 
panions with whom 1 have associated since, I 
grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think 
that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and 
li/Z/e men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather 
cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, 
there is a class of alienators more formidable than 
that which I have touched upon ; I mean your 
borrowers of books — those mutilators of collec- 
tions, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and 
creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, 
matchless in his depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, 
like a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are 
now with me in my little back study in Blooms- 
bury, reader) — with the huge Switzer-like tomes 
on each side (like the Guild-hall giants, in their 
reformed posture, guardiant of nothing) once 
held the tallest of my folios, Opera BonaventurcB, 
choice and massy divinity, to which its two 
supporters (school divinity also, but of. a lesser 



^be XLvQO IRaces ot Men* 47 

calibre — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas) showed 
but as dwarfs — itself an Ascapart ! — /ha^ Com- 
berbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory 
he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me 
to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the 
title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for 
instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers 
of understanding and appreciating the same." 
Should he go on acting upon this theory, which 
of our shelves is safe ? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two 
shelves from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable 
but by the quick eye of a loser — was whilom 
the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn 
Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more 
about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to 
him, and was, indeed, the first (of the moderns) 
to discover its beauties — but so have I known a 
foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence 
of a rival more qualified to carry her off" than him- 
self. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their 
fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is. The 
remaining nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse 
sons, when the Fates horroived Hector. Here 
stood the "Anatomy of Melancholy," in sober 
state. There loitered the "Complete Angler"; 
quiet as in life, by some stream side. In yonder 
nook, "John Buncle," a widower-volume, with 
"eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he 
sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, 
at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an 
equivalent to match it. I have a small under- 
coUection of this nature (my friend's gatherings in 
his various calls) picked up, he has forgotten ^t 



48 Bsea^s ot jElfa. 

what odd places, and deposited with as little mem- 
ory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice 
deserted. These proselytes of the gate are wel- 
come as the true Hebrews. There they stand in 
conjunction ; natives, and naturalized. The lat- 
ter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true 
lineage as I am. I charge no warehouse-room 
for these deodens, nor shall ever put myself to 
the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale 
of them to pa}^ expenses. 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and 
meaning in it. You are sure that he will make 
one hearty meal of your viands, if he can give no 
account of the platter after it. But what moved 
thee, wayward, spiteful K. , to be so importunate 
to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjura- 
tions to thee to forbear, the " Letters" of that 
princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret New- 
castle.? — knowing at the time, and knowing that I 
knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn 
over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but 
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love 
of getting the better of thy friend ? Then, worst 
cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the Galilean 
land — 

Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's won- 
der! 

— hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of 
jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, 
even as thou keepest all companies with th)^ quips 
and mirthful tales ? Child of the Green-room, it 
was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that 
part-French, better-part Englishwoman ! — that she 



Zbc ^wo IRaces ot /iBem 49 

could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in 
kindly token of remembering us, than the works 
of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no 
Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or Eng- 
land, was ever by nature constituted to compre- 
hend a title ! Was /here not Zwime?'man on Soli- 
tude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a mod- 
erate collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy 
heart overfioweth to lend them, lend thy books ; 
but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will 
return them (generally anticipating the time ap- 
pointed) with usury ; enriched with annotations 
tripling their value. I have had experience. 
Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in matter 
oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfre- 
quently, vying with the originals) in no very 
clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel : in old 
Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those ab- 
struser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! 
wandering in Pagan lands. I counsel thee, shut 
not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C. 
4 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at 
least, in every year, which set him upon revolving 
the lapse of time as it affects his mortal duration. 
The one is that which in an especial manner he 
termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old 
observances, this custom of solemnizing our 
proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is 
left to children, who reflect nothing at all about 
the matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond 
cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year 
is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by 
king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the first of 
January with indifference. It is that from which 
all date their time, and count upon what is left. 
It is the nativity of our common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — ( bells, the music nighest 
bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touch- 
ing is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I 
never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind 
to a concentration of all the images that have 
been diffused over the past tweh'-e-month ; all I 
have done or suffered, performed or neglected — ■ 
in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, 
as when a person dies. It takes a personal color ; 
nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, 
when he exclaimed, 

I saw the skirts of a departing Year. 
50 



IRew I5ear'0 iBvc^ 51 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every- 
one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful 
leave-taking-. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with 
me, last night ; though some of my companions 
affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at the 
birth of the coming year, than any very tender 
regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I 
am none of those who — 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; 
new books, new faces, new years — from some 
mental twist which makes it difficult in me to 
face the prospective. I have almost ceased to 
hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects 
of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone 
visions and conclusions. I encounter pellmell 
with past disappointments. I am armor-proof 
against old discouragements. I forgive, or over- 
come in fancy, old adversaries. I play over 
again _/br love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, 
for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now 
have any of those untoward accidents and events 
of my life reversed. I would no more alter them 
than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. 
Methinks it is better that I should have pined 
away seven of my goldenest years, when I was 
thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice 

W n, than that so passionate a love-adventure 

should be lost. It was better that our family 
should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell 
cheated us of, than that I should have at this 
moment two thousand pounds m banco, and be 
without the idea of that specious old rogue. 



52 Essays of iSlia. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity 
to look back upon those early days. Do I advance 
a paradox, when I say, that, skipping- over the 
intervention of forty years, a man may have leave 
to love hitnsel/, without the imputation of self- 
love ? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind 
is introspective — and mine is painfully so — can 
have a less respect for his present identity, than 
I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, 
and vain, and humorsome ; a notorious . . . ; 
addicted to ... ; averse from counsel, neither 
taking it nor offering it; — . . . besides ; a stam- 
mering buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and 
spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much more 
than thou canst be willing to lay at his door — but 
for the child Elia, that " other me," there in the 
background — I must take leave to cherish the re- 
membrance of that young master — with as little 
reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of 
five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some 
other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over 
its patient smallpox at five, and rougher medica- 
ments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the 
sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise 
at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hang- 
ing over it, that unknown had v\^atched its sleep. 
I know how it shrank from any the least color of 
falsehood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou 
changed ! Thou art sophisticated. I know how 
honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was 
— how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful ! 
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remem- 
ber was indeed myself, — and not some dissem- 
bling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give 



•fflew l^ear's iBvc* 53 

the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate the 
tone of my moral being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope 
of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the 
symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it 
owing to another cause : simply, that being with- 
out wife or family, I have not learned to project 
myself enough out of myself ; and having no off- 
spring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon 
memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my 
heir and favorite ? If these speculations seem 
fantastical to thee, reader— (a busy man, per- 
chance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, 
and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impen- 
etrable to ridicule, under the phantom-cloud of 
Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were 
of a character not likely to let slip the sacred ob- 
servance of any old institution ; and the ringing out 
of the Old Year was kept by them with circum- 
stances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the 
sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed 
to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to 
bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. 
Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or 
thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. 
Not childhood alone, but the young man till 
thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. 
He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could 
preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he 
brings it not home to himself, any more than in a 
hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the 
freezing days of December. But now, shall I con- 
fess a truth ? — I feel these audits but too power- 
fully. I being to count the probabilities of my 



54 iBsBa'QS ot ;6lta. 

duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of 
moments and shortest periods, like misers' far- 
things. In proportion as the years both lessen 
and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, 
and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the 
spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to 
pass away " like a weaver's shuttle." Those 
metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpal- 
atable draught of mortality. I care not to be car- 
ried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life 
to eternity ; and rel^uct at the inevitable course of 
destiny. I am in love with this green earth ; the 
face of town and country ; the unspeakable rural 
solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I 
would set up my tabernacle here. I am content 
to stand still cit the age to which I am arrived ; I, 
and my friends ; to be no younger, no richer, no 
handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age ; 
or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the 
grave. Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in 
diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. 
My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and 
are not rooted up without blood. They do not 
willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of 
being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, 
and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, 
and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and 
society, and the cheerful glass, and candlelight, 
and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, 
and jests, B.ndiro7iy itself- — do these things go out 
with life 1 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, 
when you are pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! 



1Rew lear'6 jBvc. 55 

must I part with the intense delight of having you 
(huge armfuls) in my embraces ? Must knowl- 
edge come to me, if it come at all, by some 
awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer 
by this familiar process of reading ? 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the 
smiling indications which point me to them here, 
— the recognizable face — the ''sweet assurance 
of a look?" 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying 
— to give it its mildest name — does more especially 
haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, 
beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problem- 
atic. At those times do such poor snakes as 
myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand 
and bourgeon. Then we are as strong again, 
as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal 
taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, 
puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied 
to the insubstantial, wait upon that master- 
feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity ; 
moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral 
appearances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or 
Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one 
denounced in the Canticles : — I am none of her 
minions — I hold with the Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, 
brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like 
humors, run into that capital plague-sore. I have 
heard some profess an indifference to life. Such 
hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; 
and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in 
which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some 
have wooed death — but out upon thee, I say, thou 
foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, 



56 JSssa^s ot JSUa* 

and (with Friar John) give thee to six-score thou- 
sand devils as in no instance to be excused or 
tolerated, but shunned as an universal viper ; to 
be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of ! In 
no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou 
thin, melancholy Privation^ or more frightful and 
confounding Positive! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of 
thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like hy- 
self. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he 
shall *'lie down with kings and emperors in 
death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted 
the society of such bedfellows ? — or, forsooth, that 
"so shall the fairest face appear"? — why, to 

comfort me, must Alice W n be a goblin ? 

More than all, I conceive disgust at those im- 
pertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed 
upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead 
man must take upon himself to be lecturing me 
with his odious truism, that "Such as he now is 
I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, per- 
haps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime, I am 
alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of 
thee. Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days 
are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. 
Another cup of wine — and while that turncoat 
bell, that just now mournfully chanted the 
obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes 
lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its 
peal the song made on a like occasion by hearty, 
cheerful Mr. Cotton. 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
Tells us, the day himself s not far ; 



IRew fear's Sve, 57 

And see where, breaking from the night, 
He gilds the western hills with light. 
With him old Janus doth appear, 
Peeping into the future year, 
With such a look as seems to say, 
The prospect is not good that way. 
Thus do we rise ill sights to see. 
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; 
When the prophetic fear of things 
A more tormenting mischief brings, 
More full of soul-tormenting gall 
Than direst mischiefs can befall. 
But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight 
Better inform'd by clearer light, 
Discerns sereneness in that brow, 
That all contracted seem'd but now. 
His revers'd face may show distaste, 
And frown upon the ills are past ; 
But that which this way looks is clear, 
And smiles upon the New-bom^ Year. 
He looks too from a place so high, 
The Year lies open to his eye ; 
And all the moments open are 
To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year ? 

So smiles upon us the first mom. 

And speaks us good so soon as born. 

Plague on 't ! the last was ill enough, 

This cannot but make better proof ; 

Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 

The last, why so we may this too ; 

And then the next in. reason shou'd 

Be superexcellently good : 

For the worst ills (we daily see) 

Have no more perpetuity 

Than the best fortunes that do fall j 

Which also bring us wherewithal 

Longer their being to support. 

Than those do of the other sort ; 

And who has one good year in three, 

And yet repines at destiny, 



58 JSBSa'QB Of BUa. 

Appears ungrateful in the case, 

And merits not the good he has. 

Then let us welcome the New Guest, 

With lusty brimmers of the best; 

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet* 

And renders e'en Disaster sweet; 

And though the Princess turn her back, 

Let us but line ourselves with sack, 

We better shall by far hold out, 

Till the next Year she face about. 

How say you, reader? Do not these verses 
smack of the rough magnanimity of the old Eng- 
lish vein ? Do they not fortify like a cordial, en- 
larging the heart, and productive of sweet blood 
and generous spirits in the concoction ! Where 
be those puling fears of death, just now expressed 
or affected? Passed like a cloud — absorbed in 
the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean 
washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, 
your only Spa for these hypochonderies. And 
now another cup of the generous ! and a merry 
New Year, and many of them to you all, my 
masters 1 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of 
the game." This was the celebrated wish of old 
Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to her 
devotions, loved a good game of whist. She was 
none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and- 
half players, who have no objection to take a 
hand, if you want one to make up a rubber ; who 
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning ; 
that they like to win one game and lose another ; 
that they can while away an hour very agreeably 
at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they 
play or no ; and will desire an adversary, who 
has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play 
another. These insufferable trifles are the curse 
of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole 
pot. Of such it may be said that they do not 
play at cards, but only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She de- 
tested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and 
would not, save upon a striking emergency, will- 
ingly seat herself at the same table with them. 
She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. 
She hated favors. She never made a revoke, nor 
even passed it over in her adversary without ex- 
acting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good 

59 



6o I666a^0 ct BUa» 

fight — cut and thrust. She held her good sword 
(her cards) " Uke a dancer." She sat bolt upright, 
and neither showed you her cards, nor desired to 
see yours. All people have their blind side — 
their superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, 
under the rose, that hearts was her favorite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle 
many of the best years of it — saw her take out her 
snuff-box when it was her turn to play, or snuff a 
candle in the middle of a game, or ring for a serv- 
ant till it was fairly over. She never introduced 
or connived at miscellaneous conversation during 
its progress. As she emphatically observed, 
" cards were cards " ; and if I ever saw unmingled 
distaste in her fine last-century countenance, it 
was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary 
turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to 
take a hand, and who, in his excess of candor, 
declared that he thought there was no harm in 
unbending the mind now and then, after serious 
studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could 
not bear to have her noble occupation, to which 
she wound up her faculties, considered in that 
light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she 
came into the world to do, — and she did it. She 
unbent her mind afterwards over a book. 

Pope was her favorite author; his "Rape of 
the Lock " her favorite work. She once did me 
the honor to play over with me (with the cards) 
his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem ; and 
to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in 
what points it would be found to differ from, tra- 
drille. Her illustrations were apposite and poign- 
ant ; and I have had the pleasure of sending the 
substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose 



Uibvs, Battle's ©pinions on lldbigt. 6i 

they came too late to be inserted among his in- 
genious notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first 
love ; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. 
The former, she said, was showy and specious, 
and likely to allure young persons. The uncer- 
tainty and quick shifting of partners — a thing 
which the constancy of whist abhors — the dazzling 
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — 
absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristoc- 
racy of whist, where his crown and garter give 
him no proper power above his brother nobility 
of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity so taking to the 
inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the 
overpowering attractions of a KSans Prendre Vo/e, 
— to the triumph of which there is certainly noth- 
ing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies 
of whist; — all these, she would say, make quadrille 
a game of captivation to the young and enthusias- 
tic. But whist was the soldier game — that was 
her word. It was a long meal ; not like quadrille, 
a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might 
coextend in duration with an evening. They gave 
time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady 
enmities. She despised the chance-started, capri- 
cious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the other. 
The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, re- 
minded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments 
of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel, 
perpetually changing postures and connection ; 
bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; 
kissing and scratching in a breath ; — but the wars 
of whist were comparable to the long, steady, 
deep-rooted, national antipathies of the great 
French and English nations. 



62 B60as0 of Blfa, 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired 
in her favorite game. There was nothing silly in 
it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 
^o flushes — that most irrational of all pleas that a 
reasonable being can set up ; — that any one should 
claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same 
mark and color, without reference to the playing 
of the game, or the individual worth or preten- 
sions of the cards themselves ! She held this to 
be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition in cards as 
alliteration is in authorship. She despised super- 
ficiality, and looked deeper than the colors of 
things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, and 
must have a uniformity of array to distinguish 
them ; but what should we say to a foolish squire, 
who should claim a merit from dressing up his 
tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be 
marshalled — never to take the field.? She even 
wished that whist were more simple than it is ; 
and, in my mind, would haA^e stripped it of some 
appendages, which in the state of human frailty, 
may bevenially, and even commendably, allowed 
of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the 
trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit 
always trumps .? Why two colors when the mark 
of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished 
them without it .? 

"But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably 
refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature 
of pure reason — he must have his senses delight- 
fully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic 
countries, where the music and the paintings 
draw in many to worship, whom your Quaker 
spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. 
You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings, 



SSSX3. 3Battle'6 ©pinions on Mbfst. 6;^ 

— but confess to me, whether, walking- in your 
gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, 
or among the Paul Potters in the anteroom, you 
ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, 
at all comparable to ^haf you have it in your 
power to experience most evenings over a well- 
arranged assortment of the court-cards ? — the 
pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession — 
the gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrast- 
ing deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty of 
spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! 

"All these might be dispensed with ; and with 
their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, 
the game might go on very well, pictureless. 
But the beauty of cards would be extinguished 
forever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in 
them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. 
Imagine a dull deal board, or drum-head, to 
spread them on, instead of that nice verdant car- 
pet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for those 
courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts 
and tourneys in ! Exchange those delicately- 
turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese artists, 
unconscious of their symbol, or as profanely 
slighting their true application as the arrantest 
Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little 
shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for little 
bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk 
and a slate ! " 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the 
soundness of my logic ; and to her approbation 
of my arguments on her favorite topic that even- 
ing, I have always fancied myself indebted for 
the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of 
the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal 



64 ^£663^5 Of jBlin* 

uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere 
celebrated), brought with him from Florence ; — 
this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to 
me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) 
I have kept with religious care ; though she her- 
self, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken 
with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar 
game, I have heard her say, — disputing with her 
uncle, who was very partial to it. She could 
never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce 
''Go" — or ''■ Tliafs a go." She called it an un- 
grammatical game. The pegging teased her. I 
once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar 
stake), because she would not take advantage of 
the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, 
but which she must have claimed by the disgrace- 
ful tenure of declaring " iivo for his heels." There 
is something extremely genteel in this sort of 
self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman 
born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for 
two persons, though she would ridicule the pedan- 
try of the terms, — such as pique — repique — the 
capot, — they savored (she thought) of affectation. 
But games for two, or even three, she never 
greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or 
square. She would argue thus : Cards are war- 
fare ; the ends are gain, with glory. But cards 
are war, in disguise of a sport ; w^hen single ad- 
versaries encounter, the ends proposed are too 
palpable. By themselves, it is too close a fight ; 
with spectators, it is not much bettered. No 
looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and 
then it is a mere affair of money ; he cares not for 



iSbte, JBattle'0 ©pfnions on 'Mbiet* 65 

your luck sympathetically , or for your play. Three 
are still worse ; a mere naked war of every man 
against every man, as in cribbage, without league 
or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradic- 
tory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, 
and not much more hearty infractions of them, as 
in tradrille. But in square games [she 7neant 
whist), all that is possible to be attained in card- 
playing is accomplished. There are the incen- 
tives of profit with honor, common to every 
species, — though the latter can be but very imper- 
fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
spectator is only feebly a participator. But the 
parties in whist are spectators and principals too. 
They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker- 
on is not wanted. He is rather worse than noth- 
ing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutral- 
ity, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in 
some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not 
because a cold — or even an interested — bystander 
witnesses it, but because your /?a;'/j^^r sympathizes 
in the contingency. You can win for two. You 
triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again 
are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as 
the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidi- 
ousness) your glories. Two losing to two are 
better reconciled, than one to one in that close 
butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by 
multiplying the channels. War has become a 
civil game. By such reasonings as these the old 
lady was accustomed to defend her favorite pas- 
time. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to 
play at any game, where chance entered into the 
composition, /or nothing. Chance, she would 

5 ' : ■ 



66 JSesa^B 6t Blla. 

argue, — and here again, admire the subtlety of 
her conclusion, — chance is nothing, but where 
something else depends upon it. It is obvious 
that cannot be glojy. What rational cause of ex- 
ultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace 
a hundred times together by himself? or before 
spectators, where no stake was depending ? 
Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets 
with but one fortunate number, and what possi- 
ble principle of our nature, except stupid won- 
derment, could it gratify to gain that number 
as many times successively, without a prize? 
Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in 
backgammon, where it was not played for 
money. She called it foolish, and those people 
idiots who were taken with a lucky hit under 
such circumstances. Games of pure skill were 
as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they 
were a mere system of overreaching. Played for 
glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit, 
— his memory, or combination faculty rather — 
against another's ! like a mock engagement at a 
review, bloodless and profitless. She could not 
conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of 
chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. 
Two people playing at chess in a corner of a 
room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, 
would inspire her with insufferable horror and 
ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and 
Knights, the imagery of the board, she would 
argue, (and I think in this case justly) were 
entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard 
head-contests can in no instance ally with the 
fancy. They reject form and color. A pencil 
and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper 
arena for such combatants. 



^r6. :©attle'5 ©pinions on Mfjist. 67 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurt- 
uring- the bad passions, she would retort, that 
man is ^ gaming animal. He must be always 
trying to get the better in something or other ; — 
that this passion can scarcely be more safely ex- 
pended than upon a game at cards ; that cards 
are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; 
for we do but play at being mightily concerned, 
where afev/ idle shillings are at stake, yet, during 
the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as 
those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. 
They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; 
great battling and little bloodshed ; mighty 
means for disproportioned ends ; quite as divert- 
ing, and a great deal more innoxious, than many 
of those more serious games of life which men 
play, without esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judg- 
ment in these matters, I think I have experienced 
some moments in my life, when playing at cards 
/or notlmig has even been agreeable. When I 
am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I some- 
times call for the cards, and play a game at piquet 
/or love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but 
with a toothache, or a sprained ankle, — when you 
are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up 
with an inferior spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am con- 
vinced, as sick whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I dep- 
recate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, 
alas ! to whom I should apologize. 

At such times, those terms, which my old 
friend objected to, come in as something aidmis- 



68 iBssn^e of Blia. 

sible. I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though 
they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior 
interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I 
am ?) — I wished it might have lasted forever, 
though we gained nothing, and lost nothing ; 
though it was a mere shade of play, I would be 
content to go on in that idle folly forever. The 
pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to pre- 
pare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget 
was doomed to apply after the game was over ; 
and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it 
should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be 
ever playing. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 



I HAVE no ear. 

Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am 
by nature destitute of tliose exterior twin append- 
ages, hanging ornaments, and (architecturally- 
speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. 
Better my mother had never borne me. I am, I 
think, rather delicately than copiously provided 
with those conduits ; and I feel no disposition to 
envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her 
exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets 
— those indispensable side intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done any thing to 
incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, 
which constrained him to draw upon assurance — 
to feel "quite unabashed," and at ease upon that 
article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the 
pillory ; nor, if I read them aright, is it within 
the compass of my destiny, that I ever should 
be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you 
will understand me to mean — -for music. To say 
that this heart never melted at the concord of 
sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel. ^^ Water 
parted from the Sea" never fails to move it strange- 
ly. So does ''In Infancy.'" But they were used 
to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned 

69 



70 3S05a^5 of ;6lia. 

instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentle- 
woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the 
appellation — the sweetest — why should I hesitate 
to name Mrs. S., once the blooming Fanny 
Weatheral of the Temple — who had power to 
thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even 
in his long coats ; and to make him glow, trem- 
ble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly in- 
dicated the dayspring of that absorbing sentiment, 
which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 
subdue his nature quite, for Alice W n. 

1 even think that sentimentally I am disposed to 
harmony. But organically I am incapable of a 
tune. I have been practising ' ' God save the King'' 
all my life ; whistling and humming of it over to 
myself in solitary corners ; and am not yet 
arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of 
it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been im- 
peached. 

I am not without suspicion, that I have an un- 
developed faculty of music within me. For 
thrumming in my wild way, on my friend A.'s 
piano, the other morning, while he was engaged 
in an adjoining parlor, — on his return he was 
pleased to say, ^'he tJioi/ght it could not be the 
maid/" On his first surprise at hearing the keys 
touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, 
not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on 
fenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior re- 
finement, soon convinced him that some being — 
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed 
from a principle common to all the fine arts — had 
swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all 
her (less cultivated) enthusiasm, could ncA^er have 
elicited from them. I mention this as a proof of 



B Cbapter on Bars* 71 

my friend's penetration, and not with any view of 
disparaging- Jenny. 

Scientifically I could never be made to under- 
stand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note 
in music is ; or how one note should differ from 
another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a 
soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thor- 
ough-bass I contrive to guess at, from its being 
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I trem- 
ble, however, for my misapplication of the sim- 
plest terms of that which I disclaim. While I 
profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to 
say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by mis- 
nomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in a like rela- 
tion of obscurity to me ; Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as 
conjuring as Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this — 
(constituted to the quick and critical perception of 
all harmonious combinations, I verily believe, 
beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled 
upon the gamut) to remain, as it were, singly un- 
impressible to the magic influences of an art, 
which is said to have such an especial stroke at 
soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. 
,-Yet, rather than break the candid current of my 
confessions, I must avow to you, that I have re- 
ceived a great deal more pain than pleasure from 
this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A 
carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, 
will fret me ii:ito more than midsummer madness. 
But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing 
to the measured m.alice of music. The ear is 
passive to those single strokes ; willingly enduring 
stripes while it hath no task to con. To music it 



72 Bssa^s ot Slia. 

cannot be passive. It will strive — mine at least 
will — 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; 
like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hiero- 
glyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, 
till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I 
have rushed out into the noisiest places of the 
crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, 
which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of 
the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren 
attention ! I take refuge in the unpretending as- 
semblage of honest common-life sounds ; — and 
the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes 
my paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of 
the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching 
the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a con- 
trast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience ! ) immova- 
ble, or affecting some faint emotion — till (as some 
have said, that our occupations in the next world 
will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) 
I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in 
Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly 
one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy- 
vietit ; or like that 

-Party in a parlor 



All silent, and all damn'd. 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and 
pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and 
embitter my apprehension. Words are some- 
thing ; but to be exposed to an endless battery of 
mere sounds ; to be long a-dying ; to lie stretched 
upon a rack of roses ; to keep up languor by un- 
intermitted effort ; to pile honey upon sugar, and 



B Cbapter on J/Bnts* 73 

sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious 
sweetness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and 
strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on 
empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures 
for yourself; to read a book, aH stops, and be 
obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent 
extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gest- 
ures of an inexplicable rambling mime ; — these 
are faint shadows of what I have undergone from 
a series of the ablest executed pieces of this empty 
instrunienial music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I 
have experienced something vastly lulling and 
agreeable ; — afterwards followeth the languor and 
the oppression. Like that disappointing book in 
Patmos ; or like the comings on of melancholy, 
described by Burton, doth music make her first 
insinuating approaches : ''Most pleasant it is to 
such as are melancholy given to walk alone in 
some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by 
some brook side, and to meditate upon some de- 
lightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect 
him most, amabilis insania, and mentis gratis simtis 
error ; a most incomparable delight to build 
castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, 
acting an infinite variety of parts, which they 
suppose, and strongly imagine they act, or that 
they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, 
they could spend whole days and nights without 
sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, 
and fantastical meditations, which are like so 
many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from 
them, — winding and unwinding themselves as so 
many clocks, and still pleasing their humors, 
until at the last the scene ^'urns upon a sudden, and 



74 JBssa^B ot ;SUa» 

they being now habituated to such meditations 
and solitary places, can endure no company, can 
think of nothing but harsh and distasteful sub- 
jects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, suhrusticus pudor, 
discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise 
them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing 
else ; continually suspecting, no sooner are their 
eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy 
seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, repre- 
senting some dismal object to their minds ; which 
now, by no means, no labor, no persuasions, they 
can avoid, they cannot be rid of, they cannot 
resist. " 

Something like this ''scene turning" I have 
experienced at the evening parties, at the house 

of my good Catholic friendTV'cz^ ; who, by the 

aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished 
of players, converts his drawing-room into a 
chapel, his week-days into Sundays, and these 
latter into minor heavens.* 

When my friend commences upon one of those 
solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon 
my heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of 
the dim Abbey, some five-and-thirty years since, 
waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old 
religion into my young apprehension — (whether 
it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the 
persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself 
dove's wings — or tliat other, which, with a like 
measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by 
what means the young man shall best cleanse his 
mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the 
time 

* I have been there, and still would go ; 
'Tis like a little heaveg below. — Dr. Watts. 



% Gbapter on Bars. 75 

-rapt above earth, 



And possess joys not promised at my birth. 

But when this master of the spell, not content 
to have laid his soul prostrate, goes on, in his 
power, to inflict more bliss than lies in her ca- 
pacity to receive, — impatient to overcome her 
''earthly" with his ''heavenly" — still pouring 
in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh 
from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted 
German ocean, above which, in triumphant prog- 
ress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions, Haydn and 
Mozart, with their attendant Tritons, Bach, Bee- 
thoven, and a countless tribe, whom, to attempt to 
reckon up, would but plunge me again in the 
deeps, — I stagger under the weight of harmony, 
reeling to and fro at my wits' end ; clouds, as of 
frankincense, oppress me — priests, altars, censers, 
dazzle before me — the genius of his religion hath 
me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests 
the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingen- 
ious, — he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the 
anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coro- 
neted like himself! — I am converted, and yet a 
Protestant ; — at oncejnalleus hereiicoi^um, and my- 
self grand heresiarch : or three heresies centre in 
my person. I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus 
— Gog and Magog — what not ? — till the coming 
in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the fig- 
ment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in 
which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) 
at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer 
faith ; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying 
aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host and 
hostess. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



The compliments of the season to my worthy 
masters, and a merry first of April to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this day to you— and 
you— andji/oz/, sir— nay, never frown, man, nor 
put on a long face upon the matter. Do not we 
know one another? What need of ceremony 
among friends ? We have all a touch of that same 
—you understand me— a speck of the motley. 
Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the 
general festival, should aifect to stand aloof. I 
am none of those sneakers. I am free of the cor- 
poration, and care not who knows it. He that 
meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no 
wiseacre, I can tell him. Slultus siwi. Translate 
me that, and take the meaning of it to vourself 
for your pains. What ! man, we have foiir quar- 
ters of the globe on our side, at the least compu- 
tation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry, — we 
will drink no wise, melancholy, political port on 
this day,— and let us troll the catch of Amiens 
— due ad me — due ad me, — how goes it.? 

Here shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know historically 
and authentically, who was the greatest fool that 
76 



BU 3fool6' Da^. 77 

ever lived. I would certainly give him a bumper. 
Marry, of the present breed, I think I could, with- 
out much difficulty, name you the party. 

Remove your cap a little farther, if you please ; 
it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride 
his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune 
he pleases. I will give you, for my part, 

The crazy old church clock, 



And the bewilder'd chimes. 

Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. 
It is long since you went a salamander-gathering 
down ^tna. Worse than samphire-picking by 
some odds. 'Tis a mercy your worship did not 
singe your mustachios. 

Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith 
did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediter- 
ranean ? You were founder, I take it, of the dis- 
interested sect of the Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old freemason and prince of plaster- 
ers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient 
Grand ! You have claim to a seat here at my 
right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You 
left your work, if I remember Herodotus cor- 
rectly, at eight hundred million toises, or there- 
about, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what 
a long bell you must have pulled, to call your top 
workmen to their luncheon on the low grounds 
of Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and 
onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if I am not 
ashamed to show you our monument on Fish- 
Street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it 
somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — 



78 J606as6 ot Blfa. 

cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have 
another globe, round as an orange, pretty mop- 
pet ! 

Mister Adams — 'odso, I honor your coat — pray 
do us the favor to read to us that sermon, which 
you lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and 
second in your portmanteau there — on Female 
Incontinence — the same — it will come in most 
irreverently and impertinently seasonable to the 
time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. 
Pray correct that error. 

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you 
a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing 
said or done syllogistically this day. Remove 
those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman 
break the tender shins of his apprehension stum- 
bling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. Ha ! Cokes, is 
it you ? Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay 
my devoir to you. Master Shallow, your wor- 
ship's poor servant to command. Master Silence, 
I will use a few words with you. Slender, it shall 
go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. You six 
will engross all the poor wit of the company to- 
day. I know it, I know it. 

Ha! honest R., my fine old Librarian of Lud- 
gate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless 
thy doublet, it is n6t over-new, threadbare as thy 
stories ; — what dost thou flitting about the world 
at this rate ? Thy customers are extinct, defunct, 
bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago. Thou goqst 
still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou 
canst hawk a volume or two. Good Granville S., 
thy last patron^ is flown. 



mi fools' 5)ai2, 79 

King Pandion, he is dead, 
All thy friends are lapt in lead. 

Nevertheless, noble R., come in, and take your 
seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for in 
true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to 
thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the 
goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the 
commendation of w^ise sentences, thou art noth- 
ing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. 
The spirit of chivalry forsake me forever, when I 
forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which 
declares that he might be happy with cither situated 
between those two ancient spinsters, — when I for- 
get the inimitable formal love which thou didst 
make, turning now to the one, and now to the 
other, with that Malvolian smile — as if Cervantes, 
not Gay, had written it for his hero ; and as if thou- 
sands of periods must revolve, before the mirror 
of courtesy could have given his invidious prefer- 
ence between a pair of so goodly-propertied and 
meritorious-equal damsels. 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to pro- 
tract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate 
day, — for I fear the second of April is not many 
hours distant, — in sober verity I will confess a 
truth to thee, reader, I love a Fool — as naturally, 
as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, 
with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below 
the surface of the matter, I read those Pm-ahles — 
not guessing at the involved w^isdom, — I had more 
yearnings tov/ards that simple architect, that built 
his house upon the sand, than I entertained for 
his more cautious neighbor ; I grudged at the hard 
censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept 
his talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond 



8o B66ai26 of ;6lia. 

the more provident, and, to my apprehension, 
somewhat unfeminine wariness of their competi- 
tors — I felt a kindHness, that almost amounted to a 
tendre, for those five thoughtless virgins. I have 
never made an acquaintance since, that lasted, or 
a friendship that answered, with any that had not 
some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I 
venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. 
The more laughable blunders a man shall commit 
in your company, the more tests he giveth you, 
that he will not betray or overreach you. I love 
the safety which a palpable hallucination war- 
rants ; the security which a word out of season 
ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and 
say a fool told it to you, if you please, that he 
who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath 
pounds of much worse matter in his composition. 
It is observed that " the foolisher the fowl or fish, 
— woodcocks — dotterels — cods' heads, — etc., the 
finer the flesh thereof" ; and what are commonly 
the world's received fools, but such whereof the 
world is not worthy .? and what have been some 
of the kindliest patterns of our species, but so many 
darlings of absurdity, minions of the goddess, and 
her white boys } Reader, if you wrest my words 
beyond their fair construction, it is not I, but you, 
that are the Ap7'il Fool, 



A QUAKERS* MEETING. 



Stillborn Silence ! thou that art 

Floodgate of the deeper heart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

FroGt o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind : 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave thy desert shades among 

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 

Where retired devotion dwells ! 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! * 

Reader, would'st thou know what true peace 
and quiet mean ; would'st thou find a refuge from 
the noises and clamors of the multitude ; would'st 
thou enjoy at once solitude and society ; would'st 
thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in still- 
ness, without being- shut out from the consolatory 
faces of thy species ; would'st thou be alone, and 
yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; sin- 
gular, yet not without some to keep thee in counte- 
nance ; a unit in aggregate; a simple in compos- 
ite ;— come with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the 
wmds were made"? go not out into the wilder- 
ness ; descend not into the profundities of the 

* From " Poems of all Sorts," by Richard Fleckno, i6<;^ 
^ 8i 



82 B35ai25 ot ;iSlla, 

earth ; shut not up thy casements ; nor pour wax 
into the Httle cells of thy ears with little-faith'd 
self-mistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a 
Quakers' Meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, 
and to hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for 
a multitude, it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert, compared 
with this place.? what the uncommunicating 
muteness of fishes.? — here the goddess reigns 
and revels. "Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes 
loud," do not with their inter-confounding uproars 
more augment the brawl — nor the waves of the 
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than 
their opposite (Silence, her sacred self) is multi- 
plied and rendered more intense by numbers, and 
by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call 
unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more 
and less ; and closed eyes would seem to obscure 
the great obscurity of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude 
cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a 
man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that 
which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but 
nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. 
Those first hermits did certainly understand this 
principle, when they retired into Egyptian soli- 
tudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one 
another's want of conversation. The Carthusian 
is bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of 
incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what 
so pleasant as to be reading a book through a 
long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — 
say, a wife — he, or she, too (if that be probable), 
reading another, without interruption, or oral 



H (Slualfters' ilfteeting, 8^ 

communication ? — can there ' be no sympathy 
without the gabble of words ? Away with this 
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting 
solitariness. Give me, Master Zimmermann, a 
sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles 
of some cathedral, time-stricken ; 

Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which 
those enjoy who come together for the purposes 
of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is 
the loneliness "' ' to be felt. " The Abbey Church of 
Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit- 
soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a 
Quakers' Meeting. Here are no tombs, no in- 
scriptions, — 

Sands, ignoble things, 



Dropt from the ruined sides of kings ; — 

but here is something which throws Antiquity 
herself into the foreground — Silence — eldest of 
things — language of old Night — primitive Dis- 
courser — to which the insolent decays of moulder- 
ing grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, 
as we may say, unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads. 
Looking tranquillity I 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischiev- 
ous synod ! convocation without intrigue ! parlia- 
ment without debate 1 what a lesson dost thou 



84 ;E0Sai2S oC Blia. 

read to council, and to consistory ! If my pen 
treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet 
my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your 
custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, 
which some out-welling tears would rather con- 
firm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of 
your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by 
Fox and Dewesbury. I have witnessed that which 
brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, 
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences 
of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent 
to molest you, — for ye sat betwixt the fires of two 
persecutions, the outcast and offscouring of church 
and presbytery. I have seen the reeling sea- 
ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle 
with the avowed intention of disturbing your 
quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in 
a moment a new heart, and presently sit among 
ye, as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember 
Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the baildock, 
where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, 
and "the Judge and the Jury became as dead 
men under his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I 
would recommend to you, above all church-nar- 
ratives, to read Sevvel's " History of the Quakers. '* 
It is in folio, and is the abstract of the Journals 
of Fox and the primitive Friends. It is far more 
edifying and affecting than any thing you will 
read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is noth- 
ing to stagger you, nothing: to make you mistrust, 
no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the 
worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read 
the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed 
man (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your 



B ^ual^ers' ^eetii?9» 85 

mouth) — ^James Naylor : what dreadful sufferings, 
with what patience, he endured, even to the bor- 
ing through of his tongue with red-hot iron, with- 
out a murmur ; and with what strength of mind, 
when the delusion he had fallen into, which they 
stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to 
clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in 
a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his 
first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! — so different 
from the practice of your common converts from 
enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, aposta- 
tize all, and think they can never get far enough 
from the society of their former errors, even to 
the renunciation of some saving truths, with 
which they had been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart ; 
and love the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in 
our days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what 
proportion they have substituted formality for it, 
the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have 
seen faces in their assemblies, upon which the 
dove sat visibly brooding. Others again I have 
watched, when my thoughts should have been 
better engaged, in which I could possibly detect 
nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, 
and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence 
of the fierce controversial workings. If the spirit- 
ual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least 
they make few pretences. Hypocrites they cer- 
tainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom in- 
deed that you shall see one get up amongst them 
to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, 
female, generally ancient^ voice is heard — you 
cannot guess from what part of the meeting it 



86 iBBSii'QS Ot Siul. 

proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound, 
laying out a few words, which "she thought 
might suit the condition of some present," with a 
quaking diffidence, which leaves no possibility 
of supposing that any thing of female vanity was 
mixed up, where the tones were so full of tender- 
ness and a restraining modesty. The men, for 
what I have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I wit- 
nessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It 
v/as a man of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth 
phrases it, might have danced "from head to 
foot equipt in iron mail." His frame was of iron 
too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake 
all over with the spirit — I dare not say of delu- 
sion. The strivings of the outer man were un- 
utterable — he seemed not to speak, but to be 
spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed 
down, and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed 
loosening. It was a figure to set off against Paul 
Preaching. The words he uttered were few, and 
sound — he was evidently resisting his will — keep- 
ing down his own word- wisdom with more 
mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for 
theirs. " He had been a Wit in his youth," he 
told us, with expressions of a sober remorse. 
And it was not till long after the impression had 
begun to wear av/ay, that I was enabled, with 
something like a smile, to recall the striking in- 
congruity of the confession — understanding the 
term in its worldly acceptation — with the frame 
and physiognomy of the person before me. His 
brow would have scared away the Levites — the 
Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled the 
face of Dis at Enna. By wi/, even in his youth, 



I will be sworn, he understood something far 
within the limits of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up with- 
out a word having been spoken. But the mind 
has been fed. You go away with a sermon not 
made with hands. You have been in the milder 
cavern of Trophonius ; or as in some den, where 
that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, 
the Tongue, that unruly member, has strangely 
lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with 
stillness. O, when the spirit is sore fettered, even 
tired to sickness of the j anglings, and nonsense- 
noises of the world, what a balm and solace it is, 
to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour, 
upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among 
the gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a 
uniformity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pas- 
ture, — "forty feeding like one." 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable 
of receiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be 
something more than the absence of its contrary. 
Every Quakeress is a lily ; and when they come 
up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whiten- 
ing the easterly streets of the metropolis, from 
all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like 
troops of the Shining Ones. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOL-MASTER. 



My reading has been lamentably desultory and 
immethodical. Odd, out-of-the-way old English 
plays and treatises, have supplied me with most 
of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every 
thing that relates to science, I am a whole Ency- 
clopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should 
have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or 
country gentlernen, in King John's days. I know 
less geography than a school-boy of six weeks' 
standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as 
authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know" where- 
about Africa merges into Asia ; whether Ethiopia 
lie in one or other of those great divisions ; nor 
can form the remotest conjecture of the position 
of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. 
Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear 
friend in the first-named of these two Terrse Incog- 
nitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know 
where to look for the Bear, or Charles' Wain ; the 
place of any star ; or the name of any of them at 
sight. I guess a Venus only by her brightness ; 
and if the sun on some portentous morn were to 
make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
believe, that, while all the world were gasping 
in apprehension about me, I alone should stand 
unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of 
observation. Of history and chronology I possess 



XLbc ©ID an& tbe IRew Scbool^/Rbaster* 89 

some vague points, such as one cannot help pick- 
ing up in the course of miscellaneous study ; but 
I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even 
of my own country. I have most dim apprehen- 
sions of the four great monarchies ; and sometimes 
the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as 
Jirsf, in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures 
concerning Egypt and her shepherd kings. My 
friend M. , with great painstaking, got me to think 
I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but 
gave me over in despair at the second. I am 
entirely unacquainted with the modern languages ; 
and, like a better man than myself, have "small 
Latin, and less Greek." I am a stranger to the 
shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, 
flowers, — not from the circumstance of my being 
town-born, — for I should have brought the same 
inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I 
first seen it " on Devon's leafy shores," — and am 
no less at a loss among purely town-objects, 
tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not that I 
affect ignorance — but my head has not many 
mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged 
to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can 
hold without aching. I sometimes wonder how 
I have passed my probation with so little discredit 
in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre a 
stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well 
with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found 
out, ,in mixed company ; everybody is so much 
more ready to produce his own, than to call for 
a display of your acquisitions. But in a lete-a-iete 
there is no shuffling. The truth will out. There 
is nothing which I dread so much as the being left 
alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible. 



90 }£06ai2S of Blla. 

well-informed man, that does not know me. I 
lately got into a dilemma of this sort. 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishops- 
gate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take 
up a staid-looking- gentleman, about the wrong 
side of thirty, who was giving his parting direc- 
tions (while the steps were adjusting) in atone of 
mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be 
neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but 
something partaking of all three. The youth was 
dismissed, and we drove on. As we were the 
sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed 
his conversation to me : and we discussed the 
merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of 
the driver ; the circumstance of an opposition 
coach having been lately set up, with the prob- 
abilities of its success, — to all which I was 
enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers, 
having been drilled into this kind of etiquette 
by some years' daily practice of riding to and 
fro in the stage aforesaid, — when he suddenly 
alarmed me by a startling question, whether I had 
seen the show of prize cattle that morning in 
Smithfield ? Now, as I had not seen it, and do 
not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was 
obliged to return a cold negative. He seemed a 
little mortified as well as astonished at my dec- 
laration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh 
from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to com- 
pare notes on the subject. However, he assured 
me that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded 
the show of last year. We were now approach- 
ing Norton Folgate, when the sight of some shop- 
goods ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation 
upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I was 



Zhc ©ID and tbe 1Rew Scbool= /iRaster* 91 

now a little in heart, as the nature of my morn- 
ing avocations had brought me into some sort of 
familiarity with the raw material ; and I was sur- 
prised to find how eloquent I was becoming on 
the state of the India market, — when, presently, 
he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at 
once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any 
calculation as to the value of the rental of all the 
retail shops in London. Had he asked of me 
what song the Siren sang, or what name Achilles 
assumed when he hid himself among women, I 
might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded 
a "wide solution."* My companion saw my em- 
barrassment, and, the alms-houses beyond Shore- 
ditch just coming in view, with great good-nature 
and dexterity shifted his conversation to the sub- 
ject of public charities ; which led to the compar- 
ative merits of provision for the poor in past and 
present times, with observations on the old 
monastic institutions, and charitable orders ; but, 
finding me rather dimly impressed with some 
glimmering notions from old poetic associations, 
than strongly fortified with any speculations re- 
ducible to calculation on the subject, he gave the 
matter up ; and, the country beginning to open 
more and more upon us, as we approached the 
turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination 
of his journey), he put a home thrust upon me, 
in the most unfortunate position he could have 
chosen, by advancing some queries relative to 
the North Pole Expedition. While I was mutter- 
ing out something about the panorama of those 
strange regions (which I had actually seen), by 
way of parrying the question, the coach stopping 
* " Urn Burial." 



92 Bssa^s of J6lfa. 

relieved me from any further apprehensions. 
My companion getting out, left me in the comfort- 
able possession of my ignorance ; and I heard 
him, as he went off, putting questions to an out- 
side passenger, who had alighted with him, 
regarding an epidemic disorder that had been 
rife about Dalston, and which my friend assured 
him had gone through five or six schools in that 
neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon me, 
that my companion was a school-master ; and 
that the youth whom he had parted from at our 
first acquaintance, must have been one of the 
bigger boys, or the usher. He was evidently a 
kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much 
desirous of provoking discussion by the questions 
which he put, as of obtaining information at any 
rate. It did not appear that he took any interest, 
either, in such kind of inquiries, for their own 
sakes ; but that he was in some way bound to 
seek for knowledge. A greenish-colored coat 
which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he 
was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to 
some reflections on the difference between persons 
of his profession in past and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old pedagogues ; 
the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the 
Linacres ; who believing that all learning was 
contained in the languages which they taught, 
and despising every other acquirement as superfi- 
cial and useless, came to their task as to a sport 1 
Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away 
all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolv- 
ing in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjuga- 
tions, syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing con- 
stantly the occupations which had charmed their 



Zbc ©ID anD tbe 1Rew ScboolsiflRaster. 93 

studious childhood ; rehearsing- continually the 
part of the past ; life must have slipped from them 
at last like one day. They were always in their 
first garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, 
among their I7orz and their Spicia-legia ; in Ar- 
cadia still, but kings ; the ferule of their sway 
not much harsher, but of like dignity with that 
mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus ; the 
Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their 
Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of some 
urifoward tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude 
of a Mopsa or a clown Damoetas ! 

With what a savor doth the preface to Colet's 
or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's "Accidence," 
set forth ! " To exhort every man to the learning 
of grammar that intendeth to attain the under- 
standing of the tongues, wherein is contained a 
great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would 
seem but vain and lost labor ; for so much as it 
is known, that nothing can surely be ended, 
whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and 
no building be perfect whereas the foundation and 
groundwork is ready to fall, and unable to uphold 
the burden of the frame. " How well doth this 
stately preamble (comparable to those which 
Milton commendeth as "having been the usage to 
prefix to some solemn law, then first promulgated 
by Solon, or Lycurgus,") correspond with and 
illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed 
in a succeeding clause, which would fence about 
grammar-rules, with the severity of faith-articles ! 
— " as for the diversity of grammars, it is well 
profitably taken away by the Kings Majesties 
wisdom, who, foreseeing the inconvenience, and 
favorably providing the remedie, caused one kind 



94 }£06ai50 ot iBli^* 

of grammar by sundry learned men to be dili- 
gently drawn, and so to be set out, only every 
where to be taught, for the use of learners, and 
for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters. *' 
What agusfo in that which follows : "wherein it 
is profitable that he [the pupil] can orderly decline 
his noun, and his verb." JIi's noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the 
least concern of a teacher in the present day is 
to inculcate grammar rules. 

The modern school-master is expected to know 
a little of every thing, because his pupil is re- 
quired not to be entirely ignorant of any thing. 
He must be superficially, if I may say so, omnis- 
cient. He is to know something of pneumatics, 
of chemistry, of whatever is curious, or proper 
to excite the attention of the youthful mind ; an 
insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch 
of statistics ; the quality of soils, etc. ; botany, the 
constitution of his country, cum inultis aliis. You 
may get a notion of some part of his expected 
duties by consulting the famous Tractate on 
Education, addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them, 
— he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from 
professors, which he may charge in the bill, but 
at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or 
saunters through green fields (those natural in- 
structors), with his pupils. The least part of what 
is expected from him, is to be done in school 
hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the 
viollia tern p or a f audi. He must seize every occa- 
sion — the season of the year — the time of the 
day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a wagon of 
hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to inculcate 



XLbc ©ID auD tbe "Mew Scbool^^aster. 95 

something useful. He can receive no pleasure 
from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at 
it as an object of instruction. He must interpret 
beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish a 
beggar-man, or a gypsy, for thinking of the suit- 
able improvement. Nothing comes to him, not 
spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral 
uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as it has 
been called — is to him indeed, to all intents and 
purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to 
read tedious homilies to distasting school-boys. 
Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only 
rather worse off than before ; for commonly he 
has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him 
at such times ; some cadet of a great family ; 
some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry ; that 
he must drag after him to the play, to the Pano- 
rama, t-o Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, 
or into the country, to a friend's house, or his 
favorite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this 
uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his 
board, and in his path, and in all his movements. 
He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, 
among their mates ; but they are unwholesome 
companions for grown people. The restraint is 
felt no less on the one side, than on the other. 
Even a child, "that plaything for an hour," tires 
always. The noises of children, playing their 
own fancies- — as I now hearken to them by fits, 
sporting on the green before my window, while I 
am engaged in these grave speculations at my 
neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by distance 
made more sweet — inexpressibly take from the 
labor of my task. It is like writing to music. 



96 Sssa^s ot BUa. 

They seem to modulate my periods. Theyoug-ht 
at least to do so, — for in the voice of that tender 
age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh 
prose-accents of man's conversation. I should but 
spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy 
for them, by mingling in their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with 
a person of very superior capacity to my own, — - 
not, if I know myself at all, from any consider- 
ations of jealousy or self-comparison, for the 
occasional communion with such minds has con- 
stituted the fortune and felicity of my life, — but: 
the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits 
above you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. 
Too frequent doses of original thinking from 
others, restrain what lesser portion of that faculty 
you may possess of your own. You get entangled 
in another man's mind, even as you lose yourself 
in another mans grounds. You are walking with 
a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to las- 
situde. The constant operation of such potent 
agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to im- 
becility. You may derive thoughts from others ; 
your way of thinking, the mould in which your 
thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect 
may be imparted, but not each mans intellectual 
frame. 

As little as I should wish to be always thus 
dragged upward, as little (or rather still less) is it 
desirable to be stunted downward by your associ- 
ates. The trumpet does not more stun you by 
its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its 
provoking inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the pres- 
ence of a school-master ? — because we are con- 



Zbc Oli) anD tbe "Hew Scbools^^aster* 97 

scious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. 
He is awkward, and out of place, in the society 
of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from 
among his little people, and he cannot fit the 
stature of his understanding- to yours. He can- 
not meet you on the square. He wants a point 
given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He 
is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teach- 
ingyou. One of these professors, upon my com- 
plaining that these little sketches of mine were 
any thing but methodical, and that I was unable 
to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct 
me in the method by which young gentlemen in 
Ms seminary were taught to compose English 
themes. The jests of a school-master are coarse, 
or thin. They do not /^// out of school. He is 
under the restraint of a formal or didactive hypoc- 
risy in company, as a clergyman is under a 
moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose 
in society, than the other can his inchnations. 
He is forlorn among his coevals ; his juniors 
cannot be his friends. 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man 
of this profession, writing to a friend respecting a 
youth who had quitted his school abruptly, " that 
your nephew was not more attached to me. But 
persons in my situation are more to be pitied, 
than can well be imagined. We are surrounded 
by young and, consequently, ardently affectionate 
hearts, but zve can never hope to share an atom 
of their affections. The relation of master and 
scholar forbids this. How pleasing this must he to 
you, how I envy your feelings I my friends will 
sometimes say to me, when they see young men 
whom I have educated, return after some years' 

7 



98 JBee^^s ot JBM, 

absence from school, their eyes shining with 
pleasure, while they shake hands with their old 
master, bringing- a present of game to me, or a 
toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest 
terms for my care of their education. A holiday 
is begged for the boys ; the house is a scene of 
happiness ; 1, only, am sad at heart. This fine- 
spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he 
repays his master with gratitude for the care of his 
boyish years — this young man — in the eight long 
years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, 
never could repay me with one look of genuine 
feeling. He was proud, when I praised ; he was 
submissive, when I reproved him ; but he did 
never love me ; — and what he now mistakes for 
gratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasant 
sensation which all persons feel at revisiting the 
scenes of their boyish hopes and fears ; and the 
seeing on equal terms the man they were accus- 
tomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, 
too," this interesting correspondent goes on to 
say, "my once darling Anna, is the wife of a 
school-master. When I married her, — knowing 
that the wife of a school-master ought to be a busy 
notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna 
would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling 
mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was 
in every part of the house in a moment, and whom 
I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten 
down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing her- 
self to death, — I expressed my fears that I was 
bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her ; 
and she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my 
sake to exert herself to perform the duties of her 
new situation. She promised and she has kept 



Zbc ®ID anD tbe flew Scbool*/lBa6ter. 99 

her word. What wonders will not woman's love 
perform ? My house is managed with a propriety 
and decorum unknown in other schools ; my boys 
are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper 
accommodation ; and all this is performed with a 
careful economy, that never descends to mean- 
ness. But I have lost my gentle helpless Anna ! 
When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose 
after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to 
listen to v/hat has been her useful (and they are 
really useful) employments through the day, and 
what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her 
heart and her features are changed by the duties 
of her situation. To the boys, she never appears 
other than the master's wife, and she looks up to 
me as the hoy's master ; to whom all show of love 
and affection would be highly improper, and 
unbecoming the dignity of her situation and mine. 
Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. 
For my sake she submitted to be this altered 
creature, and can I reproach her for it.? "—For the 
communication of this letter, 1 am indebted to my 
cousin Bridget. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sym« 
pathizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idio- 
syncrasy in any thing. Those natural repugnances do not 
touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, 
Spaniard, or Dutch. — " Religio Medici." 

That the author of the "Religio Medici," 
mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, con- 
versant about notional and conjectural essences ; 
in whose categories of Being the possible took the 
upper hand of the actual ; should have overlooked 
the impertinent individualities of such poor 
concretions as mankind, is not much to be ad- 
mired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the 
genius of animals he should have condescended 
to distinguish that species at all. For myself — 
earthbound and fettered to the scene of my activ- 
ities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, 
national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I 
can look with no indifferent eye upon things or 
persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste 
or distaste ; or when once it becomes indifferent, 
it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer 
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings 
and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, 

100 



Umpectect Ssmpatbies. loi 

apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope 
it may be said of me that I am a lover of my 
species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I 
cannot feel toward all equally. The more purely 
English word that expresses sympathy, will better 
explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a 
worthy man, who upon another account cannot 
be my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people 
alike. * 

I have been trying- all my life to like Scotch- 
men, and am obliged to desist from the experi- 
ment in despair. They cannot like me, — and 
in truth, I never knew one of that nation who 

*I would be understood as confining myself to the subject 
of iinperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there 
can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born 
and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that 
the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral 
antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting 
(who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly 
fighting. 

We by proof find there should be 

'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former v/rong or injury 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding, hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Hey wood's *' Hierarchie of Angels," 
and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard 
who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and 
being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed 
but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken at the first 
sight of the king. 

The cause which to that act compell'd him 



Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



102 Bssa^s ot Blia* 

attempted to do it. There is something more 
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceed- 
ing. We know one another at first sight. 
There is an order of imperfect intellects (under 
which mine must be content to rank) which in 
its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. 
The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to 
have minds rather suggestive than compre- 
hensive. They have no pretences to much 
clearness of precision in their ideas, or in their 
manner of expressing them. Their intellectual 
wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole 
pieces in it. -They are content with fragments 
and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no 
full front to them — a feature or side-face at the 
most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude 
essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend 
to. They beat up a little game peradventure — 
and leave it to knottier heads, more robust con- 
stitutions, to run it down. The light that lights 
them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 
shifting ; waxing, and again waning. Their con- 
versation is accordingly. They will throw out a 
random word in or out of season, and be content 
to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot 
speak always as if they were upon their oath, — • 
but must be understood, speaking or writing, with 
some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a 
proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green 
ear. They delight to impart their defective dis- 
coveries as they arise, without waiting for their full 
development. They are no systematizers, and 
would but err more by attempting it. Their 
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. 
The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mis- 



ITmpertect Sismpatbfee. 103 

taken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. 
His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never 
admitted to see his ideas in their growth, — if, in- 
deed, they do grow, and are not rather put together 
upon principles of clock-work. You never catch 
his mind in an undress. He never hints or sug- 
gests any thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in 
perfect order and completeness. He brings his 
total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks 
it. His riches are always about him. He never 
stoops to catch a glittering something in your 
presence to share it with you, before he quite 
knows whether it be true touch or not. You can- 
not cry halves to any thing that he finds. He 
does not find, but bring. You never witness his 
first apprehension of a thing. His understanding 
is always at its meridian, — you never see the first 
dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings of 
self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, m.isgivings, 
half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial illu- 
minations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, 
have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twi- 
light of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he or- 
thodox — -lie has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he 
has none either. Between the affirmative and the 
negative there is no border-land with him. You 
cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, 
or wander in the maze of a probable argument. 
He always keeps the path. You cannot make 
excursions with him — for he sets you right. - His 
taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. 
He cannot compromise, or understand middle 
actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. 
His conversation is as a book. His afiirmations 
have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak 



104 Bssa^s ot :6Ua. 

upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor 
like a suspected person in an enemy's country. 
*' A healthy book ! " — said one of his countrymen 
to me, who had ventured to give that appellation 
to " John Buncle,"—" Did I catch rightly what 
you said .'' I have heard of a man in health, and of 
a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that 
epithet can be properly applied to a book. " Above 
all, you must beware of indirect expressions be- 
fore a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon 
your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein 
of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I 
have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo 

da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. . 

After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to 
ask him how he liked my beauty (a foolish name 
it goes by among my friends), — when he very 
gravely assured me that " he had considerable 
repect for my character and talents," [so he was 
pleased to say,] " but had not given himself much 
thought about the degree of my personal preten- 
sions." The misconception staggered me, but did 
not seem much to disconcert him. Persons of 
this nation are particularly fond of affirming a 
truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so 
properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do in- 
deed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, 
like virtue, it were valuable for itself), that all 
truth becomes equally valuable, whether the prop- 
osition that contains it be new or old, disputed, 
or such as is impossible to become a subject of dis- 
putation. I was present not long since at a party 
of North Britons, where a son of Burns was ex- 
pected, and happened to drop a silly expression 
(in my South British way), that I wished it were 



Umpertcct S^mpatbfes. 105 

the father instead of the son, — when four of them 
started up at once to inform me that " that was 
impossible, because he was dead." An impracti- 
cable wish, it seems, was more than they could 
conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their char- 
acter, namely, their love of truth, in his biting- 
way, but with an illiberality that necessarily con- 
fines the passage to the margin, * The tediousness 
of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder 
if they ever tire one another .? In my early life 
I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of 
Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to in- 
gratiate myself with his countrymen by express- 
ing it. But I have always found that a true Scot 
resents your admiration of his compatriot, even 
more than he would your contempt of him. The 
latter he imputes to your "imperfect acquaint- 
ance with many of the words which he uses " ; 
and the same objection makes it a presumption 
in you to suppose that you can admire him. 
Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smol- 
lett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, 
for his delineation of Rory and his companion, 
upon their first introduction to our metropolis. 
Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will 
retort upon you Hume's History compared with 

* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit 
themselves, and entertain their company, v/ith relating facts 
of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common 
incidents as happens every day ; and this I have observed 
more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who 
are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of 
time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little 
relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent 
and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly toler- 
able. — Hints towards an Essav on Conversation. 



io6 jE06as6 ot Blia. 

his Continuation of it. What if the historian had 
continued " Humphrey CHnker " ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. 
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared 
with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They 
date beyond the Pyramids. But I should not care 
to be in habits of famiUar intercourse with any of 
that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling 
about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh 
of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and 
hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dis- 
simulation, and hate on the other, — between our 
and their fathers, must and ought to affect the 
blood of the children. I cannot believe it can 
run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine 
words, such as candor, liberality, the light of a 
nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of 
so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere con- 
genial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change 
— for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, 
as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess 
that I do not reHsh the approximation of Jew 
and Christian, which has become so fashion- 
able. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, 
something hypocritical and unnatural in them. 
I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kiss- 
ing and congeeing in awkward postures of an 
affected civility. If iliey are converted, why do 
they not come over to us altogether } Why keep 
up a form of separation, when the life of it is fLed.? 
If they can sit with us at table, why do they kick 
at our cookery.^ I do not understand these-^half 
convertites. Jews christianizing — Christians ju- 
daizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A mod- 



•ffmpectect Sgmpatblcs* 107 

erate Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly 
than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue 
is essentially separative. B. would have been 
more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of 
his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, 
which nature meant to be of — Christians. The 
Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his 
proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. 
How it breaks out when he sings, "The Children 
of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The 
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, 
and he rides over our necks in triumph. There 
is no mistaking him. B. has a strong expression 
of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by 
his singing. The foundation of his vocal excel- 
lence is sense. He sings with understanding, 
as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing 
the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
character to each prohibition. His nation, in 
general, have not over-sensible countenances. 
How should they ? — but you seldom see a silly 
expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit 
of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard 
of an idiot being born among them. Some admire 
the Jewish female physiognomy, I admire it — but 
with trembling. Jael had those full dark inscru- 
table eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet 
with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearn- 
ings of tenderness towards some of those faces — ■ 
or rather masks — that have looked out kindly 
upon one in casual encounters in the streets and 
highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — • 
these "images of God cut in ebony." But I 
should not like to associate with them, to share 



io8 B30a^3 ot :6lla^ 

my meals and my goodnights with them — because 
they are black. 

1 love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I 
venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good 
for the rest of the day when I meet any of their 
people in my path. When I am ruffled or . dis- 
turbed by any occurrence, the sight or quiet voice 
of a Quaker acts upon me as a ventilator, lighten- 
ing the air, and taking oft a load from the bosom. 
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona 
would say) "to live with them." I am all over 
sophisticated — with humors, fancies, craving 
hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, 
theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, 
and a thousand whim- whams, which their simpler 
taste can do v/ithout. 1 should starve at their 
primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for 
the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve 
dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often 
found to return to a question put to them may be 
explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption 
that they are more given to evasion and equivo- 
cating than other people. They naturally look 
to their words more carefully, and are more 
cautious of committing themselves. They have 
a peculiar character to keep up on this head. 
They stand in a manner upon their veracity. A 
Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. 
The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme 
cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, 
is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the 



ITmpertect Sigmpatbies. 1 09 

laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of 
truth — the one apphcable to the solemn affairs of 
justice, and the other to the common proceedings 
of daily mtercourse. As truth bound upon the 
conscience by an oath can be but truth, sc in the 
common affirmations of the shop and the market- 
place a latitude is expected, and conceded upon 
questions wanting- this solemn covenant. Some- 
thing less than truth satisfies. It is common to 
hear a person say, "You do not expect me to 
speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great 
deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of 
falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and 
a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, 
where clergy-truth, — oath-truth, by the nature of 
the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker 
knows none of this distinction. His snnple affir- 
mation being received upon the most sacred occa- 
sions, without any further test, stamps a value 
upon the words which he is to use u|X)n tlie most 
indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, 
naturally, with more severity. You can have of 
him no miore than his word. He knows, if he is 
caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, 
for himself at least, his claim to the invidious 
exemption. He knows that his syllables are 
weighed ; and how far a consciousness of this 
particular w^atchfulness, exerted against a person, 
has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and 
a diverting of the question by honest means, 
might be illustrated, and the practice justified, by 
a more sacred example than is proper to be 
adduced on this occasion. The admirable pres- 
ence of mind, w^hich is notorious in Quakers upon 
all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed 



no Bssa^B ot Blta. 

self-watchfulness, if it did not seem rather an 
humble and secular scion of that old stock of 
religious constancy, which never bent or faltered 
in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds 
of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, 
under trials and racking examinations. "You 
will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering 
your questions till midnight," said one of those 
upright Justicers of Penn, who had been putting 
law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter 
as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. 
The astonishing composure of this people is some- 
times ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. 
I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male 
Quakers, buttoned up in the straightest non-con- 
formity of their sect. We stopped to bait at An- 
dover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly 
supper, was set before us. My friends confined 
themselves to the tea-table. I, in my way, took 
supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, 
the eldest of my companions discovered that she 
had charged for both meals. This was resisted. 
Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. 
Some mild arguments were used on the part of 
the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the 
good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. 
The guard came in with his usual peremptory 
notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and 
formally tendered it — so much for tea, — I in hum- 
ble imitation tendering mine — for the supper 
which I had taken. She would not relax in her 
demand. So they all three quietly put up their 
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the 
room, the eldest and gravest going first, with 
myself closing up the rear, who thought I could 



ITmperfect S^mpatbtes, 



III 



not do better than follow the example of such 
grave and warrantable personages. We got in. 
The steps went up. The coach drove off. The 
murmurs of mine hostess not very indistinctly or 
ambiguously pronounced, became after a time 
inaudible, — and now my conscience, which the 
whimsical scene had for a while suspended, be- 
ginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the 
hope that some justification would be offered by 
these serious persons for the seeming injustice of 
their conduct. Xo my great surprise, not a sylla- 
ble v/as dropped on the subject. They sat as 
mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of 
them broke silence by inquiring of his next neigh- 
bor, '' Hast thee heard how indigoes go at the 
India House ? " — and the question operated as a 
soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 



We are too hasty when we set down our an- 
cestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous 
inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in 
their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this 
visible world we find them to have been as 
rational and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly 
as ourselves. But when once the invisible world 
was supposed to be opened, and the lawless 
agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of 
probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — 
of that which distinguishes the likely from the 
palpable absurd — could they have to guide them 
in the rejection or admission of any particular 
testimony ? That maidens pined away, wasting 
inwardly as their waxen images consumed before 
a fire — that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed — 
that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the 
oaks of the forests — or that spits and kettles only 
danced a fearful innocent vagary about some rus- 
tic's kitchen when no wind was stirring, — were 
all equally probable where no law of agency was 
understood. That the prince of the powres of 
darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the 
earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak 
fantasy of indigent eld — has neither likelihood nor 
unlikelihood a priori to us, who have no measure 
to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate 

112 



Mitcbes anD ©tber migbt fears. 113 

what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's 
market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly- 
symbolized by a goat, was it to be wondered at 
so much, that he should come sometimes in that 
body and assert his metaphor. That the inter- 
course was opened at all between both worlds, 
was perhaps the mistake,— but that once assumed, 
I see no reason for disbelieving- one attested story 
of this nature more than another on the score of 
absurdity. There is no law to judge of the law- 
less, or canon by which a dream may be criti- 
cised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have 
existed in the days of received witchcraft ; that I 
could not have slept in a village where one of 
those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were 
bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the universal 
belief that these wretches were in league with the 
author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their 
muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems 
to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough 
serving, a warrant upon them, — as if they should 
subpoena Satan ! Prospero in his boat, with hie 
books and wand about him, suffers himself to bo 
conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an 
unknown island. He might have raised a storm 
or two, we think, on the passage. His acquies- 
cence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of 
witches to the constituted powers. What stops 
the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to 
pieces, — or who had made it a condition of his 
prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious 
bait, — we have no guess. We do not know the 
laws of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive 
8 



114 }E60a^5 ot Blla. 

about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and 
more legendary aunt, supplied me with good 
store. But I shall mention the accident which 
directed my curiosity originally into this channel. 
In my father's book-closet, the "History of the 
Bible " by Stackhouse occupied a distinguished 
station. The pictures with which it abounds — 
one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solo- 
mon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of 
ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been 
upon the spot — attracted my childish attention. 
There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up 
Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We 
shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two 
huge tomes, — and there was a pleasure in remov- 
ing folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite 
straining, was as much as I could manage, from 
the situation which they occupied upon an upper 
shelf. I have not met with the work from that 
time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old 
Testament stories, orderly set down, with the 
objection appended to each story, and the solution 
of the objection regularly tacked to that. The 
objection was a summary of whatever difficulties 
had been opposed to the credibility of the history, 
by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, 
drawn up with an almost complimentary excess 
of candor. The solution was brief, modest, and 
satisfactory. The bane and antidote were both 
before you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, 
there seemed to be an end forever. The dragon 
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample 
on. But — like as was rather feared than realized 
from that slain monster in Spenser — from the 
womb of those crushed errors young dragonets 



Mitcbes anD ©tber IRigbt jfears. 115 

would creep,, exceeding the prowess of so tender 
a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit 
of expecting objections to every passage, set me 
upon starting more objections, for the glory of 
finding a solution of my own for them. I became 
staggered and perplexed, a skeptic in long coats. 
The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or 
heard read in church, lost their purity and sin- 
cerity of impression, and were turned into so 
many historic or chronologic theses to be de- 
fended against whatever impugners. I was not 
to disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that — I 
was to be quite sure that some one or other would 
or had disbelieved them. Next to making a child 
an infidel, is the letting him know that there are 
infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, 
but the child's strength. O how ugly sound 
Scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a 
suckling ! I should have lost myself in these 
mazes, and have pined away, I think, w4th such 
unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a 
fortunate piece of ill-fortune, which about this 
time befell me. Turning over the picture of the 
ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a 
breach in its ingenious fabric, — driving my incon- 
siderate fingers right through the two larger 
quadrupeds — the elephant, and the camel — that 
stare (as w^ell they might) out of the last two win- 
dows next the steerage in that unique piece of 
naval architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth 
locked up, and became an interdicted treasure. 
With the book, the ohjeciions and solutions gradu- 
ally cleared out of my head, and have seldom re- 
turned since in any force to trouble me. But 
there was one impression which I had imbibed 



ii6 JBssn^QS ot JElia. 

from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut 
out, and which was destined to try my childish 
nerves rather more seriously. That detestable 
picture ! 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The 
nighttime, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. 
The sufferings I endured in this nature would jus- 
tify the expression. I never laid my head on my 
pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh 
or eighth year of my life — so far as memory serves 
in things so long ago — without an assurance, 
which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some 
frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then ac- 
quitted in part, if I say, that to his picture of the 
Witch raising up Samuel — (O that old man cov- 
ered with a mantle !) — I owe, not my midnight 
terrors, the hell of my infancy, but the shape 
and manner of their visitation. It was he who 
dressed up for me a hag that nightly sat upon my 
pillow, — a sure bed-fellow, when my aunt or my 
maid was far from me. All day long, while the 
book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over 
his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold 
an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the 
vision true. I durst not, even in the daylight, 
once enter the chamber where I slept, without 
my face turned to the window, aversely from the 
bed where my witch-ridden pillow was. Parents 
do not know what they do when they leave ten- 
der babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The 
feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping for 
a familiar voice — when they wake screaming — 
and find none to soothe them, — what a terrible 
shaking it is to their poor nerves ! The keeping 
them up to midnight, through candlelight and the 



"Cmttcbes anD ®tber IRfgbt ^ears. n; 

unwholesome hours, as they are called — would, I 
am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove 
the better caution. That detestable picture, as I 
have said, gave the fashion to my dreams, — if 
dreams they were, — for the scene of them was 
invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never 
met with the picture, the fears would have come 
self-pictured in some shape or other, — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape, — ■ 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. 
It is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish 
servants which create these terrors in children. 
They can at most but give them a direction. 
Dear little T, H., who of all children has been 
brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion 
of every taint of superstition — who was never 
allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or 
scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear 
of any distressing story, — finds all this world of 
fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded 
ah extra, in his own ''thick-coming fancies"; 
and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse- 
child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed 
of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the 
cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. 

Gorgons, and Hydras and Chimeras dire — 
stories of Caleeno and the Harpies — may reproduce 
themselves in the brain of superstition, — but they 
were there before. They are transcripts, types, — 
the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else 
should the recital of that, which we know in a 
waking sense to be false, come to affect us at 
all 1 — or 



ii8 iBesa^e of jBlia* 

Names, whose sense we see not, 
Fray us with things that be not ? 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such 
objects, considered in their capacity of being able 
to inflict upon us bodily injury ? O, least of all ! 
These terrors are of older standing-. They date 
beyond body, — or, without the body they would 
have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, 
defined devils in Dante, — tearinp-, mansflinof 
choking, stifling, scorching demons, — are they 
one half so fearful to the spirit of a man as the 
simple idea of a spirit unembodied following 
him — 

Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread. 

And having once turn'd round, walks on 

And turns no more his head; 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread.* 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely 
spiritual, — that it is strong in proportion as it is 
objectless upon earth, — that it predominates in 
the period of sinless infancy, — are difficulties the 
solution of which might afford some probable 
insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a 
peep at least into the shadowland of pre-exist- 
ence. 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflict- 
ive. I confess an occasional nightmare ; but I 
do not, as in early youth, keep a stud of them. 
Fiendish faces, with the extinguished taper, will 
come and look at me ; but I know them for mock- 
eries, even while I cannot elude their presence, 

*Mr. Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner." 



Mitcbes anD ©tber IRigbt 3feac5» 119 

and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit 
of my imagination, I am ahiiost ashamed to say 
how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. 
They are of architecture and of buildings, — cities 
abroad, which I have never seen and hardly have 
hoped to see. I have traversed, for the seeming 
length of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, 
Lisbon — their churches, palaces, squares, market- 
places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressi- 
ble sense of delight — a map-like distinctness of 
trace — and a daylight vividness of vision, that 
was all but being awake. I have formerly trav- 
elled among the Westmoreland fells, my highest 
Alps, — but they are objects too mighty for the 
grasp of my dreaming recognition ; and I have 
again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles 
of the inner eye, to make out a shape in any way 
whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that 
country, but the mountains were gone. The 
poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There is 
Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy domes, 
and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and Abys- 
sinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns, 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 

to solace his night solitudes, — when I cannot 
muster a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons 
and his nereids gambolling before him in noc- 
turnal visions, and proclaiming sons born to 
Neptune, — when my stretch of imaginative activ- 
ity can hardly, in the night season, raise up the 
ghost of a fish-wife. To set my failures in some- 
what a mortifying light, — it was after reading the 



120 iBssa^e ot j£«a. 

noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong 
upon these marine spectra : and the poor plastic 
power, such as it is, within me set to work, to 
humor my folly in a sort of dream that very night. 
Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some 
sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, with the 
customary train sounding their conches before 
me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading god), 
and joUily we went careering over the main, till 
just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted me 
(I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the 
billows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea-rough- 
ness to a sea-calm, and thence to a river motion, 
and that river (as happens in the familiarization 
of dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, 
which landed me in the wafture of a placid wave 
or two, alone, safe, and inglorious, somewhere at 
the foot of Lambeth palace. 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep 
might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quan- 
tum of poetical faculty resident in the same soul 
waking. An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and 
a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that 
when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance 
ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question 
would be : ''Young man, what sort of dreams 
have you ? " I have so much faith in my old 
friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein 
returning upon me, I presently subside into my 
proper element of prose, remembering those elud- 
ing nereids, and that inauspicious inland landing. 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valen- 
tine. Great is thy name in the rubric, thou vener- 
able Archflamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-be- 
tween ; who and what manner of person art thou ? 
Art thou but a name, typifying the restless prin- 
ciple which impels poor humans to seek perfection 
in union ? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, 
with thy tippit and the rochet, thy apron on, and 
decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious personage ! 
like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred 
father in the calendar ; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, 
nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of undipt infants to 
eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; 
nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop 
Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou 
comest attended with thousands and ten thousands 
of little Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precen- 
tors ; and instead of the crosier, the mystical 
arrow is borne before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those 
charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross 
and inter-cross each other at every street and 

121 



122 3£55ag6 of Blia. 

turning. The weary and all forespent two-penny 
postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embar- 
rassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible 
to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is car- 
ried on in this loving town, to the great enrich- 
ment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, 
no emblem is so common as the heart — that little 
three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and 
fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is 
twisted and tortured into more allegories and af- 
fectations than an opera-hat. What authority we 
have in history or mythology for placing the head- 
quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this 
anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not 
very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve 
as well as any other. Else w^e might easily im- 
agine, upon some other system which might 
have prevailed for any thing which our pathology 
knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his 
mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling : *' Mad- 
am, my liver and fortune are entirely at your dis- 
posal" ; or putting a delicate question : ''Aman- 
da, have you a mz'c^r/yto bestow.?" But custom 
has settled these things, and awarded the seat of 
sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less 
fortunate neighbors wait at animal and anatom- 
ical distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban 
and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at 
the door. It ' ' gives a very echo to the throne where 
Hope is seated." But its issues seldom answer to 
this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the 
person we want to see comes. But of all the clam- 
orous visitations the welcomest in expectation is 



\t)alent(ne's Ba^. 123 

the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a 
Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that 
announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the 
knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, 
confident, and befitting one that bringeth good 
tidings. It is less mechanical than on other days. 
You will say : " That is not the post, I am sure." 
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delight- 
ful eternal commonplaces, which "having been 
will always be " ; which no schoolboy nor school- 
man can write away ; having your irreversible 
throne in the fancy and affections, — what are your 
transports when the happy maiden, opening with 
careful finger, careful not to break the emblematic 
seal, bursts upon the sight of some well-designed 
allegory, some type, some youthful fancy, not 
without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such deface not over abundant in sense, 
— young love disclaims it, — and not quite silly, — ■ 
something between wind and water, a chorus 
where the sheep might almost join the shepherd, 
as they did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 
All Valentines are not foolish, and I shall not 
easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have 
leave to call you so) E. B. E. B. lived opposite 
a young maiden whom he had often seen, un- 
seen, from his parlor window in C e Street. 

She was all joyousness and innocence, and just of 
an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of 
a temper to bear the disappointment of missing 
one with good-humor. E. B. is an artist of no 
common powers ; in the fancy parts of designing, 



124 JEssa^s ot Blia. 

perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known at 
the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in 
the way of his profession, but no further ; for E. B, 
is modest, and the world meets nobody half- 
way. E. B. meditated how he could repay this 
young- maiden for many a favor which she had 
done him unknown ; for when a kindly face 
greets us, though but passing by, and never knows 
us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an obli- 
gation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set 
himself at work to please the damsel. It was 
just before Valentine's Day, three years since. 
He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous 
work. We need not say it was on the finest gilt 
paper with borders, — full, not of common hearts 
and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories 
of love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for 
E. B. is a scholar). There was Pyramus and 
Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor 
Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in 
Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices such 
as beseemed — a work, in short, of magic. Iris 
dipt the woof. This on Valentine's eve he com- 
mended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate 
orifice (O jgnoble trust !) of the common post ; 
but the humble medium did its duty, and from 
his watchful stand, the next morning, he saw 
the cheerful messenger knock, and by and by the 
precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the 
happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, 
clap her hands, as one after one the pretty em- 
blems unfolded themselves. She danced about, 
not with light love or foolish expectations, for she 
had no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that 
could have created those bright images which de- 



Dalentine'0 Wm* 125 

lighted her. It was more like some fairy present, a 
Godsend, as our familiarly pious ancestors termed 
a benefit received where the benefactor was un- 
known. It would do her no harm. It would do 
her good forever after. It is good to love the 
unknown. I only give this as a specimen of 
E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
kindness. 

Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor 
Opheha, and no better wish, but with better aus- 
pices, we wish to all faithful lovers who are too 
w^ise to despise old legends, but are content to 
rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop 
Valentine and his true church. 



MY RELATIONS. 



I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man 
may account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, 
if he have either of his parents surviving. I have 
not that felicity — and sometimes think feelingly 
of a passage in Browne's "Christian Morals," 
where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or 
seventy years in the world. "In such a com- 
pass of time," he says, " a man may have a close 
apprehension what it is to be forgotten when he 
hath lived to find none who could remember his 
father, or scarcely the fi lends of his youth, and 
may sensibly see with what a face in no longer 
time Oblivion will look upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was 
one whom single-blessedness had soured to the 
world. She often used to say that I was the only 
thing in it which she loved, and when she thought 
I was quitting it she grieved over me with a 
mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive 
my reason cannot altogether approve. She was 
from morning till night poring over good books 
and devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes 
were " Thomas aKempis," in Stanhope's transla- 
tion, and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book, with 
the matins and complines regularly set down, — 
terms which I was at that time too young to 
126 



illbB IRelations. 127 

understand. She persisted in reading- them, al- 
though admonished daily concerning their Papis- 
tical tendency, and went to church every Sa.bbath, 
as a good Protestant should do. These were the 
only, books she studied, though I think at one 
period of her life she told me she had read, with 
great satisfaction, the "Adventures of an Unfor- 
tunate Young Nobleman." Finding the door of 
the chapel in Essex Street open one day, — it was 
in the infancy of that heresy, — she went in, liked 
the sermon and the manner of worship, and fre- 
quented it at intervals for some time after. She 
came not for doctrinal points, and never missed 
them. With some little asperities in her constitu- 
tion, which I have above hinted at, 'she w^as a 
steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Chi'istian. 
She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd 
mind — extraordinary at a repai'tee, one of the few 
occasions of her breaking silence — else she did 
not much value wit. The only secular employ- 
ment I remember to have seen her engaged in 
was the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
them into a china basin of fair water. The odor 
of those tender vegetables to this day comes back 
upon my sense, redolent of soothing recollections. 
Certainly it is the most delicate of culinary opera- 
tions. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had; 
none — to remember. By the uncle's side I may 
be said to have been born an orphan. Brother 
or sister I never had any — to know them. A 
sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, 
died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or 
what a care, may I not have missed in her ! But 
I have cousins sprinkled about in Hertfordshire,— 



1 23 B06ag3 ot Blia, 

besides hvo, with whom I have been all my life 
in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may 
term cousins par excellence. These are James 
and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself by 
twelve, and ten years ; and neither of them seem 
disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to ^ 
waive any of the prerogatives which primogeni- 
ture confers. May they continue still in the 
same mind ; and when they shall be seventy-five, 
and seventy-three years old (I cannot spare them 
sooner), persist in treating me in my grand clima- ^ 
teric precisely as a stripling, or younger brother ! 
James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath 
her unities, which not every critic can penetrate, 
or, if we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen 
of Yorick, and of none since his, could have 
drawn J. E. entire, — those fine Shandean lights 
and shades, which make up his story. I must 
limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the 
fates have given me grace and talent. J. E. then 
— to the eye of a common observer at least — 
seemeth made up of contradictory principles. 
The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philoso- 
pher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's 
doctrine is invariably aVwar "'^ith his tempera- 
ment, which is high sanguine. With always 
some fire-new project in his brain, J. E. is the 
systematic opponent of innovation, and crier 
down of every thing that has not stood the test 
of age and experiment. With a hundred fine no- 
tions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he 
is startled at the least approach to the romantic 
in others ; and, determined by his own sense in 
everything, commends you to the guidance of 
common-sense on all occasions. With a touch 



/IB^ IRelations. 129 

of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he 
is only anxious thaijyou should not commit your- 
self by doing any thing absurd or singular. On 
my once letting slip at table that I was not fond 
of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any 
rate not to say so — for the world would think me 
mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for 
works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a 
choice collection), under the pretext of buying 
only to sell again — that his enthusiasm may give 
no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, 
why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domeni- 
chino hang still by his wall ? — is the ball of his 
sight much more dear to him ? or what picture- 
dealer can talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to 
warp their speculative conclusions to the bent of 
their individual humors, his theories are sure to 
be in diametrical opposition to his constitution. 
He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, upon 
instinct ; chary of his person upon principle, as a 
travelling Quaker. He has been preaching up to 
me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great 
— the necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's 
getting on in the world. He himself never aims 
at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit 
that would stand upright in the presence of the 
Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him 
discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest 
wisdom, — and to see him during the last seven 
minutes that his dinner is getting ready. Nature 
never ran up iq her haste 9, more restless piece 
of workmanship than when she moulded this im- 
petuous cousin, --^and Art never turned out a more 
elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, 

9 



130 JB6Sti^6 ot Blfa. 

upon this favorite topic of the advantages of 
quiet and contentedness in the state, whatever it 
be, that we are placed in. He is triumphant on 
this theme, when he has you safe in one of 
those short stages that ply for the western road, 
in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John 
Murray's street, — where you get in when it is 
empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle 
hath completed her just freight, — a trying three 
quarters of an hour to some people. He wonders 
at your fidgetiness, — " where could we be better 
than we are, /htis sitting, thus consulting P" — 
* ' prefers, for his part, a state of rest to locomo- 
tion,'' — with an eye all the while upon the coach- 
man, — till at length, waxing out of all patience, 
at yotir ivant of it, he breaks out into a pathetic 
remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so 
long over the time which he had professed, and 
declares peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the 
coach is determined to get out, if he does not 
drive on that instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detect- 
ing a sophistry, he is incapable of attending yoti 
in any chain of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild 
work with logic ; and seems to jump at most ad- 
mirable conclusions by some process, not at all 
akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath 
been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that 
there exists such a faculty at all in man as rea- 
son ; and wondereth how man came first to have 
a conceit of it, — enforcing his negation with all 
the might of I'easoning he is master of He has 
some speculative notions against laughter, and 
will maintain that laughing is not natural to hirn, — 
when peradventure the next moment his lungs 



/IR^ IRelattons. 131 

shall crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the 
best things in the world — and declareth that wit 
is his aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing 
the Eton boys at play in their grounds, — Wha^ a 
pity iolhiitk, thai these frie ingenuous lads in a 
few years will all be changed into frivolous Members 
of Parliament ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous, — 
and in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. 
This is that which I admire in him. I hate peo- 
ple who meet Time half-way. I am for no com- 
promise with that inevitable spoiler. While he 
lives, J. E. will take his swing. It does me good, 
as I walk towards the street of my daily avoca- 
tion, on some fine May morning, to meet him 
marching in a quite opposite direction, with a 
jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine 
face that indicates some purchase in his eye — a 
Claude — or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable 
leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phillips' 
— or where not, to pick up pictures, and such 
gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth 
me, to read a short lecture on the advantages a 
person like me possesses above himself in having 
his time occupied with business which he must 
do, — assureth me that he often feels it hangs 
heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holi- 
days — and goes off— Westward Ho ! — chanting a 
tune, to Pall Mall, — perfectly convinced that he 
has convinced me, — while' I proceed in my op- 
posite direction, tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of In- 
difference doing the honors of his new purchase, 
when he has fairly housed it. You must view it 
in every light, till he has found the best — placing 



132 16063^5 Of :611a. 

it at this distance, and at that, but always suitingf 
the focus of your sight to his own. You must 
spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial 
perspective, — though you assure him that to you 
the landscape shows much more agreeable with- 
out that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, 
who does not only not respond to his rapture, but 
who should drop an unseasonable intimation of 
preferring one of his anterior bargains to the 
present ! — the last is always his best hit — his 
''Cynthia of the minute." Alas ! how many a 
mild Madonna have I known to come in — a 
Raphael ! — keep its ascendancy for a few brief 
moons, — then, after certain intermedial degrada- 
tions, from the front drawing-room to the back 
gallery, thence to the dark parlor, — adopted in 
turn by each of the Carracci, under successive 
lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking 
its fall, — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, 
go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo 
Maratti ! — which things when I beheld — musing 
upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, 
hath made me to reflect upon the altered condi- 
tion of great personages, or that woful Queen of 
Richard the Second — 

-set forth in pomp 



She came adorned hither like sweet May, 
Sent back Hke Hallowmas or shortest day. 

With great love ioxyou, J. E. hath but a limited 
sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a 
world of his own, and makes slender guesses at 
what passes in your mind. He never pierces 
the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old 
established play-goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So- 



iflR^ IRelations^ 133 

and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very 
lively comedian — as a piece of news ! He adver- 
tised me but the other day of some pleasant green 
lanes which he had found out for me, k?towing 
me io be a great walker, m my own immediate 
vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot 
any time these twenty years ! He has not much 
respect for that class of feelings which goes by 
the name of sentimental. He applies the defini- 
tion of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively — 
and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is 
affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of 
a creature in pain, to a degree which I have 
never witnessed out of womankind. A constitu- 
tional acuteness to this class of suffering may in 
part account for this. The animal tribe in par- 
ticular he taketh under his especial protection. A 
broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find 
an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his 
client forever. He is the apostle to the brute 
kind — the never-failing friend of those who have 
none to care for them. The contemplation of a 
lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring 
him so, "all for pity he could die." It will take 
the savor from his palate, and the rest from his 
pillow for days and night. With the intense feel- 
ing of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the 
steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of 
that ''true yoke-fellow with Time," to have ef- 
fected as much for the Animal, a.she hath done for 
the Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin 
is but imperfectly formed for purposes which de- 
mand cooperation. He cannot wait. His amel- 
ioration plans must be ripened in a day. For this 
reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in 



134 J£s6a>Q3 of jElla. 

benevolent societies, and combinations for the 
alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal con- 
stantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his 
coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while they 
think of debating. He was blackballed out of a 
society for the Relief of . . . because the 
fervor of his humanity toiled beyond the formal 
apprehension, and creeping processes of his asso- 
ciates. I shall always consider this distinction 
as a patent of nobility in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to 
smile at, or upbraid my unique cousin ! Marry, 
heaven, and all good manners, and the under- 
standing that should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! 
With all the strangeness of this st7'angest of the 
Elias — I would not have him in one jot or tittle 
other than he is ; neither would I barter or ex- 
change my wild kinsman for the most exact, 
regular, and every way consistent kinsman 
breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you 
some account of my cousin Bridget, — if you are 
not already surfeited with cousins — and take you 
by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on 
an excursion which we made a summer or two 
since, in search of more cousins^ 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 



Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for 
many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, 
extending beyond the period of memory. We 
housed together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort 
of double sin oneness ; with such tolerable comfort, 
upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no 
sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, 
with the rash king s offspring, to bewail my cel- 
ibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and 
habits — yet so, as "with a difference." We are 
generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings 
— as it should be among near relations. Our 
sympathies are rather understood than expressed ; 
and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my 
voice more kindly than ordinary, my cousin burst 
into tears, and complained that I was altered. 
We are both great readers in different directions. 
While I am hanging over (for the thousandth 
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his 
strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some 
modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common 
reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh 
supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little 
concern in the progress of events. She must 
have a story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so 
there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or 

135 



136 Bssa^s ot :isiia. 

evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in 
fiction — and almost in real life — have ceased to 
I interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of- 
-the-way humors and opinions — heads with some 
I diverting twist in them — the oddities of author- 
\jiip please me most. My cousin has a native 
disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre. 
Nothing goes down with her that is quaint, 
irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. 
She " holds nature is more clever." 1 can pardon 
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 
** Religio Medici," but she must apologize to me 
for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she 
has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching 
the intellectuals of a dear favorite of mine, of the 
last century but one, — the thrice noble, chaste, 
and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical, 
and original-brained, generous Margaret New- 
castle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener per- 
haps than 1 could have wished, to have had for 
her associates and mine, free-thinkers, — leaders 
and disciples of novel philosophies and systems ; 
but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts their 
opinions. That which was good and venerable 
to her, when a child, retains its authority over 
her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks 
with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too 
positive ; and I have observed the results of our 
disputes to be almost uniformly this, — that in 
matters of fact, dates, and circumstances it turns 
out that I was in the right, and my cousin in the 
wrong. But where we have differed upon moral 
points ; upon some things proper to be done, or 



^acfters BnD, In t>crtforD0btrc. 137 

let alone ; whatever heat of opposition, or steadi- 
ness of conviction I set out with, I am sure 
always, in the long run, to be brought over to her 
way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman 
with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to 
be told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick 
(to say no worse of it) of reading in company ; 
at which times she will answer jyes or 7to to a 
question, without fully understanding its purport, 
— which is provoking, and derogatory in the 
highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the 
said question. Her presence of mind is equal to 
the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes 
desert her upon trifling occasions. When the 
purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, 
she can speak to it greatly ; but in matters which 
are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been 
known sometimes to let slip a word less season- 
ably. 
/ Her education in youth was not much at- 
/ tended to, and she happily missed all that train 
J of female garniture which passeth by the name 
\ of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by 
\ accident or design, into a spacious closet of good 
old English reading, without much selection or 
prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair 
and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, 
tliey should be brought up exactly in this fashion. 
I know not whether their chance in wedlock 
might not be diminished by it, but I can answer 
for it that it makes (if the worst comes to the 
worst) most inc omp arable old maids. 

In a season of distress she is the truest com- 
forter, but in the teasing accidents and minor 



138 Bssa^s of Blia. 

perplexities, which do not call out thez£;/7/ to meet 
them, she sometimes miaketh matters worse by 
an excess of participation. If she does not always 
divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occa- 
sions of life she is sure always to treble your sat- 
isfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with or 
upon a visit, but best when she goes a journey 
with you. 

We made an excursion together a few sum- 
mers since into Hertfordshire, to beat up the 
quarters of some of our less known relations in 
that fine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, 
or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more 
properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a 
farm-house, — delightfully situated within a gentle 
walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember 
having been there on a visit to a great-aunt, when 
I was child, under the care of Bridget, who, as I 
have said, is older than myself by some ten years. 
I wish that I could throw into a heap the remain- 
der of our joint existences, that we might share 
them in equal division. But that is impossible. 
The house was at that time in the occupation of 
a substantial yeoman, who had married my grand- 
mothers sister. His name was Gladman. My 
grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. 
The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourish- 
ing in that part of the country, but the Fields are 
almost extinct. More than forty years have 
elapsed since the visit I speak of ; and for the 
greater portion of that period we have lost sight 
of the other two branches also. Who or what 
sort of persons inherited Mackery End — kindred 
or strange folk — we were afraid almost to 



ilBacfter^ ;6nD, in IberttorDabire. 139 

conjecture, but determined some day to ex- 
plore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the 
noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, 
we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity 
about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, 
though every trace of it was effaced from my 
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I 
had not experienced for many a year. For though 
/ had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being 
there together, and we had been talking about 
Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part 
became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I 
thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when 
present, O how unlike it was to /ha/ which I had 
conjured up so many times instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the sea- 
son was in the ''heart of June" and I could say 
with the poet : 

But thou that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination ; 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation ! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, 
for she easily remembered her old acquaintance 
again, — some altered features, of course, a little 
grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to 
disbelieve for joy ; but the scene soon reconfirmed 
itself in her affections, — and she traversed 
every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood- 
house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon- 
house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) 
— with a breathless impatience of recognition, 
v/hich was more pardonable perhaps than decor- 



14 o Bssa^s of JBM, 

ous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some 
things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house, 
— and that was a difficulty which to me singly 
would have been insurmountable ; for I am ter- 
ribly shy in making myself known to strangers 
and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than 
scruple, winged my cousin in without me ; but 
she soon returned with a creature that might have 
sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It 
was the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by mar- 
riage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the 
old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. 
Six of them, females, were noted as the hand- 
somest young women in the country. But this 
adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they 
all — more comely. She was born too late to have 
remembered me. She just recollected in early 
life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed 
out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of 
kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those 
slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the 
rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, 
as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hert- 
fordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly 
acquainted as if we had been born and bred up 
together ; were familiar, even to the calling each 
other by our Christian names. So Christians 
should call one another. To have seen Bridget, 
and her — it was like the meeting of the two script- 
ural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an 
aptitude of form and stature, answering to her 
mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have 
shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were 
made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, 



/Bbackers BnD, in IbertforDabire. 141 

and our friend that was with us. I had ahnost 
forgotten him, — but B. F. will not so soon forget 
that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this 
on the far distant shores where the kangaroo 
haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or 
rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our 
coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native 
wine, never let me forget with what honest pride 
this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheat- 
hampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found 
rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who 
did indeed know something more of us, at a time 
when she almost knew nothing. With that cor- 
responding kindness we were received by them 
also, — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the oc- 
casion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated 
recollections of things and persons, to my utter 
astonishment, and her own — and to the astound- 
ment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 
that was not a cousin there, — old effaced images 
of more than half-forgotten names and circum- 
stances still crowding back upon her as words 
written in lemon come out upon exposure to a 
friendly warmth, — when I forget all this, then may 
my country cousins forget me ; and Bridget no 
more remember, that in the days of weakling 
infancy I was her tender charge, — as I have been 
her care in foolish manhood since, — in those 
pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery 
End, in Hertfordshire. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands 
a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though 
reduced to humble use, serving at present for an 
entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, 
if you are young, reader, you may not know, was 
the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrick's 
Drury, — all of it that is left. I never pass it with- 
out shaking some forty years from off my shoul- 
ders, recurring to the evening when I passed 
through it to see my first play. The afternoon had 
been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder 
folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. 
With what a beating heart did I watch from the 
window the puddles, from the stillness of which 
I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessa- 
tion ! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the 
glee with which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather, F., 
had sent us. He kept the oil-shop (now Davies") 
at the corner of Featherstone Buildings, in Hol- 
born. F. was a tall, grave person, lofty in speech, 
and had pretensions above his rank. He asso- 
ciated in those days with John Palmer, the com- 
edian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; 
if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather 
borrow somewhat of his manner from my god- 
142 



/IBs first f>lai5. 143 

father. He was also known to, and visited by 
Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that 
young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elope- 
ment with him from a boarding-school at Bath, — 
the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were 
present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived 
in the evening with his harmonious charge. From 
either of these connections it may be inferred that 
my godfather could command an order for the then 
Drury Lane Theatre at pleasure, — and, indeed, 
a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in 
Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say 
was the sole remuneration which he had received 
for many years' nightly illumination of the orches- 
tra and various avenues of that theatre, — and he 
was content it should be so. The honor of Sheri- 
dan's familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was 
better to my godfather than money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; gran- 
diloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the com- 
monest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had 
two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth, 
(how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips !) 
which my better knowledge since has enabled me 
to correct. In strict pronunciation they should 
have been sounded wcg versa, — but in those young 
years they impressed me with more awe than they 
would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro, 
in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabi- 
cally elaborated, or Anglicized, into something like 
verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help 
of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that 
was little) to the highest parochial honors which 
St. Andrews has to bestow. 

He is dead, — and thus much I thought due to 



144 :600a S3 of Blia* 

his memory, both for my first orders (little won- 
drous talismans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to 
outward sight, but opening to me more than Ara- 
bian paradises !), and moreover that by his testa- 
mentary beneficence I came into possession of the 
only landed property which I could ever call my 
own, — situate near the roadway village of pleas- 
ant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I jour- 
neyed down to take possession, and planted foot 
on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor 
descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess 
the vanity ?) with larger paces over my allotment 
of three quarters of an acre, with its commodious 
mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an Eng- 
lish freeholder that all betwixt sky and centre 
was my own. The estate had passed into more 
prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can 
restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the 
uncomfortable manager who abolished them ! — 
with one of these we went. I remember the 
waiting at the door — not that which is left — but 
between that and an inner door in shelter, — O 
when shall I be such an expectant again ! — with 
the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house 
accompaniment in those days. As near as I can 
recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the 
theatrical fruiteresses then was, "Chase some 
oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill of the 
play " ; — chase pro chuse. But when we got in, 
I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven 
to my imagination, which was soon to be dis- 
closed — the breathless anticipation I endured ! 
I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed 
to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakspeare,— ? 



/Hbi2 first IPlas. 145 

the tent scene with Diomede, — and a sight of that 
plate can always bring back in a measure, the 
feeling of that evening. The boxes at that time, 
full of well-dressed women of quality, projected 
over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching down 
were adorned with a glistering substance (I know 
not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling 
— a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar 
candy, — yet, to my raised imagination, divested 
of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified 
candy ! The orchestra lights at length arose, 
those ''fair Auroras!" Once the bell sounded. 
It was to ring out yet once again, — and, inca- 
pable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes 
in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. 
It rang the second time. The curtain drew up, 
— I was not past six years old, and the play was 
Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History, 
— the ancient part of it, — and here was the court 
of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the 
past. I took no proper interest in the action 
going on, for I understood not its import, — but I 
heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst 
of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. 
Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
passed before me. I knew not players. I was 
in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol 
of their devotion almost converted me into a 
worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those 
significations to be something more than ele- 
mental fires. It was all enchantment and a 
dream. No such pleasure has since visited me 
but in dreams. Harlequin's invasion followed ; 
where, I remember, the transformation of the 
10 



146 Bssa^s of JElla. 

magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me 
a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor 
carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as 
the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the 
Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception 
of some scenery, very faint traces are left in 
my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, 
called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, 
upon Rich, not long since dead — but to my ap- 
prehension (too severe for satire), Lun was as re- 
mote a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of 
a line of Harlequins — transmitting his dagger of 
lath (the Avooden sceptre) through countless ages. 
I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent 
tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like 
the apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins 
(thought I) look when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. 
It was the Way of the World. I think I must 
have sat at it as grave as a judge ; for, I remem- 
ber, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wish- 
fort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. 
Robinson Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, 
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and 
authentic as in the story. The clownery and 
pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean 
passed out of my head. I believe, I no more 
laughed at them, than at the same age I should 
have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque 
Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with 
devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone 
around the inside of the old Round Church (my 
church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 178 1-2, when I 



/IBs 3FirBt jplag, 147 

was from six to seven years old. After the inter- 
vention of six or seven other years (for at school 
all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the 
doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening 
had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected 
the same feelings to come again with the same 
occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at 
sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. 
In that interval what had I not lost ! At the first 
period I knew nothing, discriminated nothing. I 
felt all, loved all, wondered all, — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how, — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned 
a rationalist. The same things were there mate- 
rially ; but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! 
The green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn 
between two worlds, the unfolding of which was 
to bring back past ages to present a ''royal 
ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, 
which was to separate the audience for a given 
time from certain of their fellow-men who were 
to come forward and pretend those parts. The 
lights — the orchestra lights — came up a clumsy 
machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, 
was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — which 
had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom 
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which 
ministered to its warning. The actors were men 
and women painted. I thought the fault was 
in them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration 
which those many centuries — of six short twelve- 
months — had wrought in me. Perhaps it was 
fortunate for me that the play of the evening was 



148 l£6sn^6 of jEUa, 

but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time 
to crop some unreasonable expectations, which 
might have interfered with the genuine emotions 
with which I was soon after enabled to enter 
upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in 
Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon 
yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; 
and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, 
the most delightful of recreations. 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 



In comparing modern with ancient manners, 
we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the 
point of gallantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or 
deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay 
to females, as females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates our 
conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth 
century, of the era from which we date our civil- 
ity, we are but just beginning to leave off the very 
frequent practice of whipping females in public, 
in common with the coarsest male offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can 
shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women 
are still occasionally — hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no 
longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentle- 
men. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a 
fish- wife across the kennel ; or assists the apple- 
' woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which 
some unlucky dray has just dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in 
humbler life, who would be thought in their way 
notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon 
it in places where they are not known, or think 
themselves not observed, — when I shall see the 

149 



150 JBssa^s of :iSlla. 

traveller for some rich tradesman part with his 
admired box-coat, to spread it over the defence- 
less shoulders of the poor woman who is passing 
to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach 
with him, drenched in the rain,— when I shall no 
longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a 
London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the 
exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease, 
and jeering at her distress ; till one, that seems to 
have more manners or conscience than the rest, 
significantly declares ' ' she should be welcome to 
his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- 
somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or 
that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaint- 
ance, and you shall confess you have not seen a 
politer-bred man in Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is 
some such principle influencing our conduct, 
when more than one half of the drudgery and 
coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be 
performed by women. 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this 
boasted point to be any thing more than a con- 
ventional fiction ; a pageant got up between the 
sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of 
life, in which both find their account equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the 
salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I 
shall see the same attentions paid to age as to 
youth, to homely features as to handsome, to 
coarse complexions as to clear, — to the woman, 
as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a 
fortune, or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more than a 
name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well- 



/IBoDem 0aUantc2. 151 

dressed company can advert to the topic oi female 
old age without exciting, and intending to excite, 
a sneer ; — when the phrases "antiquated virgin- 
ity,'' and such a one has "overstood her market," 
pronounced in good company, shall raise imme- 
diate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear 
them spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street Hill, merchant, 
and one of the directors of the South-Sea Com- 
pany — the same to whom Edwards, the Shaks- 
peare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet 
— was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I 
have met with. He took me under his shelter 
at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon 
me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever 
there is of the man of business (and that is not 
much) in my composition. It was not his fault 
that I did not profit more. Though bred a 
Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he 
was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not 
one system of attention to females in the drawing- 
room, and another in the shop, or at the stall. I 
do not mean that he made no distinction. But he 
never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the 
casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have 
seen him stand bareheaded — smile if you please 
— to a poor servant-girl, while she has been in- 
quiring of him the way to some street — in such 
a posture of unforced civility, as neither to em- 
barrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the 
offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common 
acceptation of the word, after women ; but he rev- 
erenced and upheld, in every form in which it 
came before him, womanhood. I have seen him 
— nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market- 



152 Bssass of }EUa. 

woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, 
exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, 
that it might receive no damage, with as much 
carefulness as if she had been a countess. To 
the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield 
the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar- 
woman) with more ceremony than we can afford 
to show our grandams. He was the Preux 
Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidore or Sir Tristan 
to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to 
defend them. The roses, that had long faded 
thence, still bloomed for him in those withered 
and yellow cheeks. 

He Vv^as never married, but in his youth he paid 
his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — 
old Winstanley's daughter of Clapton, who dying 
in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in 
him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It 
was during their short courtship, he told me, that 
he had been one day treating his mistress to a 
profusion of civil speeches — the common gallant- 
ries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto 
manifested no repugnance — but in this instance 
with no effect. He could not obtain from her a 
decent acknowledgment in return. She rather 
seemed to resent his compliments. He could 
not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always 
shown herself above that littleness. When he 
ventured, on the following day, finding her a 
little better humored, to expostulate with her on 
her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with 
her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike 
to his attentions ; that she could even endure some 
high-flown compliments ; that a young woman 
placed in her situation had a right to expect all 



^oDern GaUantr^* 153 

sorts of civil things said to her ; that she hoped 
she could digest a dose of adulation, short of 
insincerity, with as little injury to her humility 
as most young women ; but that — a little before he 
had commenced his compliments — she had over- 
heard him by accident, in rather rough language, 
rating a young woman, who had not brought 
home his cravats quite to the appointed time, 
and she thought to herself, '' As I am Miss Susan 
Winstanley, and a young lady, — a reputed beauty 
and known to be a fortune — I can have my choice 
of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very 
fine gentleman who is courting me, — but if I had 
been poor Mary Such-a-one {naming the niillinet') 
— and had failed of bringing home the cravats to 
the appointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up 
half the night to forward them — what sort of com- 
pliments should I have received then ? And my 
woman's pride came to my assistance ; and I 
thought, that if it were only to do Tne honor, a 
female, like myself, might have received hand- 
somer usage ; and I was determined not to 
accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of 
that sex, the belonging to which was after all my 
strongest claim and title to them." 

I think the lady discovered both generosity, and 
a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she 
gave her lover ; and I have sometimes imagined, 
that the uncommon strain of courtesy, which 
through life regulated the actions and behavior of 
my friend toward all womankind indiscriminately, 
owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson 
from the lips of his lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would entertain 
the same notion of these things that Miss Win- 



154 JEssaiss of :£lia» 

Stanley showed. Then we should see something 
of the spirit of consistent gahantry ; and no longer 
witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern 
of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or 
rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female 
mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no 
less female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — 
maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman 
derogates from her own sex, in whatever condi- 
tion placed — her handmaid or dependent — she 
deserves to have diminished from herself on that 
score ; and probably will feel the diminution, 
when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not in- 
separable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. 
What a woman should demand of a man in court- 
ship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she is 
a woman ; and next to that to be respected by 
him above all other women. But let her stand 
upon her female character as upon a foundation ; 
and let the attentions, incident to individual pref- 
erence, be so many pretty additaments and orna- 
ments — as many, and as fanciful as you please — 
to that main structure. Let her first lesson be 
with sweet Susan Winstanley — to revereiice her 
sex. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER 
TEMPLE. 



I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of 
my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its 
gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said 
— for in those young years, what was this king of 
rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleas- 
ant places ? These are of my oldest recollections. 
I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more 
frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those 
of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metrop- 
olis. What a transition for a countryman visiting 
London for the first time — the passing from the 
crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected 
avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its 
classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal 
look hath that portion of it, which, from three 
sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly 
pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper high t, 



00 



156 iBes^iQS ot jeita, 

confronting with massive contrast, the lighter, 
older, more fantastically shrouded one, named 
of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown-office Row 
(place of my kindly engendure), right opposite 
the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot 
with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and 
seems but just weaned from her Twickenham 
Naiades ! a man would give something to have 
been born in such places. What a collegiate 
aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the 
fountain plays, which I have made to rise and 
fall, how many times, to the astoundment of the 
young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not be- 
ing able to guess at its recondite machinery, were 
almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as 
magic! What an antique air had the now almost 
effaced sundials, with their moral inscriptions, 
seeming coevals with that Time which they 
measured, and to take their revelations of its flight 
immediately from heaven, holding correspond- 
ence with the fountain of light ! How would the 
dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the 
eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or 
the first arrests of sleep ! 

Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

W^hat a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
dulness of communication, compared with the 
simple altar-like structure, and silent heart-lan- 
guage of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god 
of Christian gardens. Why is it almost every- 



ZH ®ID JSencbers ot tbe ITnner temple, 157 

where vanished ? If its business-use be superseded 
by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its 
beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. 
It spoke of moderate labors, of pleasure not pro- 
tracted after sunset, of temperance, and good 
hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe 
of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed 
it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for 
sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the 
birds to apportion their silvery warblings by, for 
flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The 
shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun"; and, 
turning philosopher by the very occupation, pro- 
vided it with mottoes more touching than tomb- 
stones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, 
recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial 
gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. 
I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they 
are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty 
delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I 
hope, in a talk of fountains, and sundials. He is 
speaking of sweet garden scenes : 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
Ripe apples drop about my head. 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
The nectarine, and curious peach, 
Into my hands themselves do reach. 
Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 
Withdraws into its happiness. 
The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find j 
Yet it creates, transcending these, 
Far other worlds, and other seas, 
Annihilating all that's made 



15S £363125 ot JBUn. 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 

Then wets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light,- 

How well the skilful gardener drew, 

Of flowers and herbs this dial new, 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 

And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers.* 



The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in 
like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are 
dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, 
as in that little green nook behind the South-Sea 
House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary- 
pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to 
play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh 
streams from their innocent wanton lips in the 
square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger 
than they were figured. They are gone, and the 
spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is 
gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. 
Why not then gratify children by letting them 
stand.? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. 
They are awakening images to them at least. 
Why must every thing smack of man and man- 
nish.? Is the world all grown up? Is childhood 
dead.? Or is there not in the bosoms of the 

* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



^be ©ID :fiSencber6 ot tbe ITnner temple, 159 

wisest and best some of the child's heart left, 
to respond to its earliest enchantments ? The 
figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged liv- 
ing figures, that still flitter and chatter about that 
area, less Gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter 
of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and 
innocent as the little cool playful streams those 
exploded cherubs uttered ? 

They have lately Gothicized the entrance to the 
Inner Temple Hall, and the library front ; to 
assimilate them, I suppose, to the body of the 
hall, which they do not at all resemble. What 
has become of the winged horse that stood over 
the former ? a stately arms ! and who has removed 
those frescoes of the virtues, which Italianized 
the end of the Paper Building. ?-^my first hint of 
allegory ! They must account to me for these 
things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to 
call the parade ; but the traces are passed away 
of the footsteps which made its pavement awful ! 
It is become common and profane. The old 
benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in 
the forepart of the day at least. They might not 
be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted 
the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, 
when you passed them. We walk on even terms 
w4th their successors. The roguish eye of 

J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, 

almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. 
But what insolent familiar durst have mated 
Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was a quad- 
rate, his step massy and elephantine, his face 
square as a lion's, his gait peremptory and path- 
keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving 



i6o B30a^0 ot JElia. 

column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow- 
beater of equals and superiors, who made a soli- 
tude of children wherever he came, for they fled 
his insufferable presence, as they would have 
shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thun- 
der in their ears, whether he spake to them in 
mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being-, 
indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. 
Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of 
his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, 
darkening the air. He took it not by pinches, 
but a palmful at once, diving for it under the 
mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; 
his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, 
tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, with 
buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced the 
terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be 
seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They 
were coevals, and had nothing but that and their 
benchership in common. In politics Salt was a 
Whig, and Coventry a stanch Tory. Many a sar- 
castic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry 
had a rough spinous humor — at the political con- 
federates of his associate, which rebounded from 
the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon balls 
from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever 
man, and of excellent discernment in the cham- 
ber practice of the law. I suspect his knowl- 
edge did not amount to much. When a case of 
difficult disposition of money, testamentary or 
otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed 
it over with a few instructions to his man Lovel, 
who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch 



Zhc ®ID JBencbers ot tbc Unner temple. i6i 

it out of hand by the light of natural understand- 
ing-, of which he had an uncommon share. It 
was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; 
a child might pose him in a minute, — indolent and 
procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men would 
give him credit for vast application, in spite of 
himself. He was not to be trusted with himself 
with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner 
party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords 
then — or some other necessary part of his equi- 
page. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these 
occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If 
there was any thing which he could speak un- 
seasonably ; he was sure to do it. He was to 
dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy 
on the day of her execution ; — and L. who had a 
wary foresight of his probable hallucinations, be- 
fore he set out, schooled him with great anxiety 
not in any possible manner to allude to her story 
that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the 
injunction. He had not been seated in the par- 
lor, where the company was expecting the din- 
ner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the 
conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of the 
window, and pulling down his ruffles — an ordi- 
nary motion with him— observed, "it was a 
gloomy day," and added, *' Miss Blandy must be 
hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of 
this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by 
some of the greatest men of his time a fat person 
to be consulted, J"iQt alone in matters pertaining 
to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and em- 
barrasgrnents of conduct— from force of manner 
entirely, He never laug-hed. He had the same 

SI 



i62 )Es6a^5 ot jSlia. 

good fortune among the female world, — was a 
known toast with the ladies, and one or two are 
said to have died for love of him — I suppose, 
because he never trifled or talked gallantry with 
them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common 
attentions. He had a fine face and person, but 
wanted, methought, the spirit that should have 
shown them off with advantage to the women. 
His eye lacked lustre. Not so, thought Susan 
P. ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, 
in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting 

the pavement of B d Row, with tears that fell 

in drops which might be heard, because her friend 
had died that day — he, whom she had pursued 
with a hopeless passion for the last forty years, 
— a passion, which years could not extinguish or 
abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, 
puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade 
from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P., thou 
hast now thy friend in heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble 
family of that name. He passed his youth in 
contracted circumstances, which gave him early 
those parsimonious habits which in after-life never 
forsook him ; so that, with one windfall or an- 
other, about the time I knew him he was master 
of four or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did 
he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He 
lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Ser- 
jeant's Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, is doing 
self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I 
divine not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat 
at Npfth Cj'ay, where he ^§14om spent above a 
day or two at a tirne in the surnrner ; but preferred, 
4uring the hot ni<;^nths, st^n^ing^ gt hi§ wi^dpw in 



tTbe ©ID :fiSencbers of tbe Ifnner temple. 163 

this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as 
he said, " the maids drawing water all day long." 
I suspect he had his within-door reasons for the 
preference. Hie currus et armafuere. He might 
think his treasures more safe. His house had the 
aspect of a strong-box. C. was a close hunks— 
a hoarder rather than a miser— or, if a miser, none 
of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought dis- 
credit upon a character, which cannot exist with- 
out certain admirable points of steadiness andunity 
of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but can- 
not, I suspect, so easily despise him. By takmg 
care of the pence, he is often enabled to part with 
the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless 
P-enerous fellows halting at an immeasurable dis- 
tance behind. C. gave away 30,000/. at once m 
his life-time to a blind charity. His housekeep- 
ing: was severely looked after, but he kept the 
table of a gentleman. He would know who came 
in and who went out of his house, but his kitchen 
chimney was never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all— never 
knew what he was worth in the world ; and having 
but a competency for his rank, which his indolent 
habits were little calculated to improve, might 
have suffered severely if he had not had honest 
people about him. Lovel took care of every thing. 
He was at once his clerk, his good servant, 
his dresser, his friend, his '' flapper," his guide, 
stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing 
without consulting Lovel, or failed in any thing 
without expecting and fearing his admonishing 
He put himself almost too much in his hand|, haa 
they not been the purest in the world. He re- 
signed his title almost to respect as a master, it 



1 64 JBse^^s ot J6lia, 

L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that 
he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incor- 
rigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, 
and ''would stride." In the cause of the op- 
pressed he never considered inequalities, or cal- 
culated the number of his opponents. He once 
wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of 
quality that had drawn upon him, and pummelled 
him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman 
had offered insult to a female — an occasion upon 
which no odds against him could have prevented 
the interference of Lovel. He would stand next 
day bareheaded to the same person, modestly to 
excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, 
where something better was not concerned. L, 
was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face 
as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to 
resemble (I have a portrait of him which con- 
firms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry 
— next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay 
or plaster-of-Paris to admiration, by the dint of 
natural genius merely ; turned cribbage boards, 
and such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took 
a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; 
made punch better than any man of his degree in 
England ; had the merriest quips and conceits ; 
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and in- 
ventions as you could desire. He was a brother 
oftheangle, moreover, andjustsuchafree, hearty, 
honest companion as Mr. Isaak Walton would 
have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in 
his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy- 
smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness 
— ^'a remnant most forlorn of what he was," — 



^be ©ID J6encber6 ot tbc ITnnec C^emple. i6r 



J 



yet even then his eye would light up upon the 
mention of his favorite Garrick. He was greatest 
he would say, in Bayes — *'was upon the stage 
nearly throughout the whole performance, and as 
busy as a bee." At intervals, too, he would 
speak of his former life, and how he came up a 
little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how 
his mother cried at parting with him, and how he 
returned, after some few years' absence, in his 
smart new livery, to see her, and she blessed her- 
self at the change, and could hardly be brought 
to believe that it was "her own bairn." And 
then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, 
till I have wished that sad second childhood might 
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. 
But the common mother of us all in no long time 
after received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks 
upon the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson 
would join to make up a third. They did not 
walk linked arm in arm in those days — "as now 
our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but gen- 
erally with both hands folded behind them for 
state, or with one at least behind, the other carry- 
ing a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a pre- 
possessing man. He had that in his face which 
you could not term unhappiness ; it rather im- 
plied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks 
were colorless even to whiteness. His look was 
uninviting, resembling (but without his sourness) 
that of our great philanthropist. I know that he 
did good acts, but I could never make out what 
he was. Contemporary with these, but subordi- 
nate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity. He 
walked burly and square — in imitation, I think, 



1 66 J6s5ai20 ot JBlitL, 

of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dig- 
nity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty 
well, upon the strength of being a tolerable anti- 
quarian, and having a brother a bishop. When 
the account of his year's treasurership came to be 
audited, the following singular charge was unan- 
imously disallowed by the bench: ''Item, dis- 
bursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, 
for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders." 
Next to him was old Barton — a jolly negation, 
who took upon him the ordering of the bills of 
fare for the parliament chamber, where the 
benchers dine — answering to the combination 
rooms at College — much to the easement of his 
less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more 
of him. Then Read, and Twopenny — Read, 
good-humored and personable — Twopenny, good- 
humored, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his 
own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenu- 
ated and fleeting. Many must remember him 
(for he was rather of later date) and his singular 
gait, which was performed by three steps and a 
jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little 
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; the 
jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. 
Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned 
it, I could never discover. It w^as neither grace- 
ful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose 
any better than common walking. The extreme 
tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. 
It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often 
rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as 
brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. 
His features were spiteful. I have heard that he 
would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when any 



XLbc ©ID :fiSencber5 ot tbe IFnnec temple* 167 

thing had offended him. Jackson, — the omnis-' 
cient Jackson he was called — was of this period. 
He had the reputation of possessing more multi- 
farious knowledge than any man of his time. He 
was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of 
the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of 
the cook applying to him, with much formality of 
apology, for instructions how to write down edge 
bone of beef in ^ his bill of commons. He was 
supposed to know, if any man in the world did. 
He decided the orthography to be as I have given 
it — fortifying his authority with such anatomical 
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) 
learned and happy. Some do spell it yet, per- 
versely, ai/ch bone, from a fanciful resemblance 
between its shape and that of the aspirate so de- 
nominated. I had almost forgotten Mingay with 
the iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He 
had lost his right hand by some accident, and 
supplied it with a grappling-hook, which he 
wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected 
the substitute before I was old enough to reason 
whether it were artificial or not. I remember the 
astonishment it raised in me. He was a bluster- 
ing, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the 
phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power 
— somewhat like the horns in the forehead of 
Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres, who 
walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of 
the reign of George the Second, closes my imper- 
fect recollections of the old benchers of the Inner 
Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are you fled ? Or, if the 
like of you exist, why exist they no more for me? 
Ye inexplicable half-understood appearances, why 



1 68 J665as3 ot Blia. 

comes in reason to tear away the preternatural 
mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you ? 
Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, 
who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the 
mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw 
gods as '' old men covered with a mantle," walk- 
ing upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic 
idolatry perish — extinct be the fairies and fairy 
trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of 
childhood, there will, forever, spring up a well of 
innocent or wholesome superstition, — the seeds 
of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — 
from every-day forms educing the unknown and 
the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will 
be light, when the grown world flounders about 
in the darkness of sense and materiality. While 
childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, 
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread 
her holy wings totally to fly the earth. 

P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
memory, and the erring notices of childhood ! 
Yet I protest I always thought that he had been 
a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, 
married young, and losing his lady in childbed, 
within the first year of their union, fell into a deep 
melancholy, from the effects of which probably 
he never thoroughly recovered. In what a new 
light does this place his rejection (O call it by a 
gentler name !) of mild Susan P., unravelling into 
beauty certain peculiarities of this shy and retir- 
ing character ! Henceforth, let no one receive 
the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, 
in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not 



Zbc ©ID 3cncbcv5 ot the Inncx C:emple. 169 

verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and 
outskirts of history. He is no such honest chron- 
icler as R. N. , and would have done better per- 
haps to have consulted that gentleman, before he 
sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But 
the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 
and his new masters — would but have been puz- 
zled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good 
man wots not, peradventure, of the license which 
Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking 
age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond 
the Gentleman s — his farthest monthly excursions 
in this nature having been long confined to the 
holy ground of honest Urban: s obituary. May it 
be long before his own name shall help to swell 
those columns of unenvied flattery ! Meantime, O 
ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish 
him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human 
creatures. Should infirmities overtake him — 
he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make 
allowance for them, remembering that " ye your- 
selves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your 
ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish! so 
may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your 
church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in 
default of more melodious choristers, unpoisoned, 
hop about your walks ! so may the fresh-colored 
and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her 
playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her 
prettiest blushing curtsey as ye pass, reductive of 
juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of 
this generation eye you, pacing your stately ter- 
race, with the same superstitious veneration, with 
which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies 
that solemnized the parade before ye ! 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 



The custom of saying grace at meals had, 
probably, its origin in the early times of the 
world, and the hunter state of man, when dinners 
were precarious things, and a full meal was some- 
thing more than a common blessing ! when a 
bellyful was a windfall, and looked like a special 
providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs 
with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a 
lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would natu- 
rally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ 
of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to 
be understood, why the blessing of food — the 
act of eating — should have had a particular ex- 
pression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct 
from that implied and silent gratitude with which 
we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of 
the many other various gifts and good things of 
existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon 
twenty other occasions in the course of the day 
besides my dinner. I want a form for setting 
out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, 
for • a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. 
Why have we none for books, those spiritual 
repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before 
Shakspeare — a devotional exercise proper to be 
170 



(3cace JBetore /nbeat. 171 

said before reading the '* Fairy Queen"? — but 
the received ritual having prescribed these forms 
to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall 
confine my observation to the experience which 
I have had of the grace, properly so called, — 
commending my new scheme for extension to a 
niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and 
perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compil- 
ing by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of 
a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelas- 
sian Christians, no matter where assembled. 

The form, then, of the benediction before eat- 
ing has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at 
the simple and unprovocative repast of children. 
It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly 
graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows 
whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, 
sits down to his fare with a present sense of the 
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the 
rich, into whose minds the conception of wanting 
a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, 
have entered. The proper end of food — the ani- 
mal sustenance — is barely contemplated by them. 
The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally 
his bread for the day. Their courses are peren- 
nial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be 
preceded by the grace. That which is least 
stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free 
for foreign considerations. A man may feel thank- 
ful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton 
with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the 
ordinance and institution of eating ; when he 
shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent 
with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of 



t72 JSss^^e ot jSlla. 

venison or turtle. When I have sat (a rarus 
hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savory soup 
and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moisten- 
ing the lips of the guests with desire and a dis- 
tracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that 
ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous 
orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to inter- 
pose a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of 
purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that 
waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle 
flame of devotion. The incense which rises 
round is pagan, and the bellygod intercepts it for 
his own. The very excess of the provision be- 
yond the needs, takes away all sense of propor- 
tion between the end and the means. The giver 
is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the in- 
justice of returning thanks — for what ? — for having 
too much, while so many starve. It is to praise 
the gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce 
consciously perhaps, by the good man who says 
the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and 
others — a sort of shame — a sense of the co-pres- 
ence of circumstances which unhallow the bless- 
ing. After a devotional tone put on for a few 
seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into 
his common voice ! helping himself or his neigh- 
bor, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of 
hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypo- 
crite, or was not most conscientious in the dis- 
charge of the duty ; but he felt in his inmost mind 
the incompatibility of the scene and the viands 
before him with the exercises of a calm and 
rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim — Would you have 



©race ^Before /ibeat. 173 

Christians sit down at table, like hogs to their 
troughs, without remembering the Giver ? — no, 
— I would have them sit down as Christians, 
remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if 
their appetites must run riot, and they must pam- 
per themselves with delicacies for which east and 
west are ransacked, I would have them postpone 
their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite 
is laid ; when the still small voice can be heard, 
and the reason of the grace returns — with tem- 
perate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and 
surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiv- 
ing. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he 
kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, 
when he put into the mouth of Celseno any thing 
but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of 
the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond 
others, though that is a meaner and inferior grati- 
tude ; but the proper object of the grace is sus- 
tenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not delicacies ; 
the means of life, and not the means of pampering 
the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his bene- 
diction at some great Hall- feast, when he knows 
that his last concluding pious word — and that, 
in all probability, the sacred name which he 
preaches is but the signal for so many impatient 
harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as 
little sense of true thankfulness (which is tem- 
perance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the 
good man himself does not feel his devotions a 
little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams min- 
gling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits 
is the banquet which Satan, in the Paradise 



174 Bssa^s of ;6lia. 

Regained, provides for a temptation in the wil- 
derness : 

A table richly spread in regal mode 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
would go down without the recommendatory 
preface of a benediction. They are like to be short 
graces where the Devil plays the host. I am afraid 
the poet wants his usual decorum in this place. 
Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of 
a gaudy day at Cambridge ? This was a tempta- 
tion fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet 
is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments 
altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted 
holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which 
the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to 
the simple wants and plain hunger of the guests. 
He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his 
dreams might have been taught better. To the 
temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God, 
what sort of feasts presented themselves.? — He 
dreamed indeed. 

As appetite is wont to dream. 
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats ? 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 

Food to Elijah bringing even and morn; 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought : 



Grace JSefore jflibeat 175 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 

Into the desert, and how there he slept 

Under a Juniper ; then how awaked 

He found his supper on the coals prepared 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 

And ate the second time after repose, 

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days; 

Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these 
teniperate dreams of the divine Hungerer. To 
which of these two visionary banquets, think you, 
would the introduction of what is called the grace 
have been the most fitting and pertinent? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but 
practically I own that (before meat especially) they 
seem to involve something awkward and unsea- 
sonable. Our appetites, of one or another kind, 
are excellent spurs to our reason, which might 
otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of 
preserving and continuing the species. They are 
fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance with 
a becoming gratitude ; but the moment of appe- 
tite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, 
perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The 
Quakers, who go about their business of every de- 
scription with mxore calmness than we, have more 
title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I 
have always admired their silent grace, and the 
more because I have observed their appHcations 
to the meat and drink following to be less passion- 
ate and sensual than ours. They are neither glut- 
tons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as 
a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, 
calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They 
neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see 



176 J£53as0 ot Blia. 

a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine 
it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am 
not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous 
morsels of deer's flesh were not made to be re- 
ceived with dispassionate services. I hate a man 
who swallows it, affecting- not to know what he 
is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. 
I shrink instinctively from one who professes to 
like minced veal. There is a physiognomical 
character in the tastes for food. C. holds that 
a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses 
apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. 
With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a 
less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. 
The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with 
me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems 
to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient and 
querulous under culinary disappointments, as to 
come home at the dinner hour, for instance, ex- 
pecting some savory mess, and to find one quite 
tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that 
commonest of kitchen failures — puts me beside 
my tenor. The author of the "Rambler" used 
to make inarticulate animal noises over a favorite 
food. Was this the music quite proper, to be pre- 
ceded by the grace ? or would the pious man have 
done better to postpone his devotions to a season 
when the blessing might be contemplated with 
less perturbation ? I quarrel with no man's tastes, 
nor would set my thin face against those excellent 
things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as 
these exercises, however laudable, have little in 
them of grace or gracefulness, a. man should be 
sure, before he ventures so to, ^t^c& them, that 



©race JSefote /IReat. 177 

while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, 
he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great 
fish — his Dagon — with a special consecration of 
no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are 
the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of 
angels and children ; to the roots and severer 
repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not 
slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor and 
humble man ; but at the heaped-up boards of the 
pampered and the luxurious they become of dis- 
sonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occa- 
sion, methinks, than the noise of those better 
befitting organs would be which children hear 
tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our 
meals, or are too curious in the study of them, 
or too disordered in our application to them, or 
engross too great a portion of those good things 
(which should be common) to our share, to be 
able with any grace to say grace. To be thank- 
ful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, 
is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense 
of this truth is what makes the performance of this 
duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. 
In houses where the grace is as indispensable as 
the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled 
question arise, as to who shall say it P while the 
good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, 
or some other guest, belike of next authority, 
from years of gravity, shall be bandying about 
the office between them as a matter of compli- 
ment, each of them not unwilling to shift the 
awkward burden of an equivocal duty from his 
own shoulders .? 

I once drank tea in company with two Metho- 
dist divines of different persuasions, whom it was 
12 



178 J60S3^6 ot l£lia* 

my fortune to introduce to each other for the first 
time that evening. Before the first cup was 
handed around, one of these reverend gentlemen 
put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether 
he chose to say any thing. It seems it is the 
custom with some sectaries to put up a short 
prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother 
did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an 
explanation, with little less importance he made 
answer that it was not a custom known to his 
church ; in which courteous evasion the other 
acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in compli- 
ance with a weak brother, the supplementary or 
tea-grace was waived altogether. With what 
spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests 
oihis religion playing into each others hands the 
compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice — 
the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, 
with expectant nostrils hovering over the two 
flamens, and (as between two stools) going away 
in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
reverence ; along one, lam afraid, cannot escape 
the charge of impertinence. I do not quite ap- 
prove of the epigrammatic conciseness with which 
that equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) 
C. V. L. , when importuned for a grace, used to 
inquire, first slyly leering down the table, ''Is 
there no clergyman here? " — significantly adding, 

"Thank G ." Nor do I think our old form at 

school quite pertinent, where we were used to 
preface our bald bread-and-cheese suppers with a 
preamble, connecting with that humble blessing a 
recogfnition of benefits the most awful and over- 
whelming to the imagination which religion has 



©race 3Before /iReat. 179 

to offer, Non tujic illis erat locus. I remember 
we were put to it to reconcile the phrase "good 
creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the 
fare set before us, wilfully understanding that ex- 
pression in a low and animal sense — till someone 
recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden 
days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were 
wont to have some smoking joints of roast meat 
upon their nightly boards, till some pious bene- 
factor, commiserating the decencies, rather than 
the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh 
for garments, and gave us — horresco refer e7is — 
trousers instead of mutton. 



DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERY. 



Children love to listen to stories about their 
elders, when they were children ; to stretch their 
imagination to the conception of a traditionary 
great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. 
It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about 
me the other evening to hear about their great- 
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in 
Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in 
which they and papa lived) which had been the 
scene — so at least it Avas generally believed in 
that part of the country — of the tragic incidents 
which they had lately become familiar with from 
the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain 
it is that the whole story of the children and their 
cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in 
wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, 
the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; 
till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a 
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with 
no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her 
dear mother's looks, too tender to be called up- 
braiding. Then I went on to say how religious 
and how good their great-grandmother Field was, 
how beloved and respected by everybody, though 
she was not indeed the mistress of this great 
house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in 
i8o 



S^reamsCbflDren ; B 1Re\?ers» 18 1 

some respects she might be said to be the mistress 
of it too) committed to her by the owner, who 
preferred living in a newer and more fashionable 
mansion which he had purchased somewhere in 
the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a 
manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the 
dignity of the great house in a sort while she 
lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was 
nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
stripped and carried away to the owner "s other 
house, where they were set up, and looked as awk- 
ward as if some one were to carry away the old 
tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and 
stick them up in Lady C. 's tawdry gilt drawing- 
room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, 
''that would be foolish indeed." And then I 
told how, when she came to die, her funeral 
was attended by a concourse of all the poor, 
and some of the gentry too, of the neighbor- 
hood for many miles round, to show their re- 
spect for her memory, because she had been 
such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed 
that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a 
great part of the Testament besides. Here little 
Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a ttdl, 
upright, graceful person their great-grandmother 
Field once was ; and how in her youth she was 
esteemed the best dancer, — here Alice's little right 
foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon 
my looking grave, it desisted, — the best dancer, I 
was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called 
a cancer, came, and bowed her dov/n with pain ; 
but it could never bend her good spirits, or make 
them stoop, but they were still upright, because 
she was so good and religious. Then I told how 



1 82 1Sb3^'Q6 Of JSUa. 

she was used to sleep by herself in a lone cham- 
ber of the great lone house ; and how she believed 
that an apparition of two infants was to be seen 
at midnight gliding up and down the great stair- 
case near where she slept, but she said "those 
innocents would do her no harm" ; and how 
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had 
my maid to sleep with me, because I was never 
half so good or religious as she, — and yet I never 
saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eye- 
brows, and tried to look courageous. Then I told 
how good she was to all her grandchildren, having 
us to the great house in the holidays, where I in 
particular used to spend many hours by myself, in 
gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, 
that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be 
turned into marble with them ; how I never could 
be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, 
with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out 
hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken 
panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out, — some- 
times in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which 
I had almost to myself, unless when now and then 
a solitary gardening man would cross me, — and 
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the 
walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, 
because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and 
then, — and because I had more pleasure in stroll- 
ing about among the old melancholy-looking yew- 
trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, 
and the fir-apples, which were good for nothing 
but to look at, — or in lying about upon the fresh 
grass with all the fine garden smells around me, 
— or basking in the orangery, till I could almost 



©ream-GbilDren ; H IRever^* 183 

fancy myself ripening too along v/ith the oranges 
and the limes in that grateful warmth, — or in 
watching the dace that darted to and fro in the 
fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here 
and there a great sulky pike hanging midway 
down the water in silent state, as if it mocked 
at their impertinent friskings ; — I had more pleas- 
ure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the 
sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 
and such-like common baits of children. Here 
John slyly deposited back upon the plate a 
bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by 
Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, 
and both seemed willing to relinquish them 
for the present as irrelevant. Then, in a some- 
what more heightened tone, I told how, though 
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand- 
children, yet in an especial manner she might be 
said to love their uncle, John L. , because he was 
so handsome and spirited a youth, and a. king to 
the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in 
solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount 
the most mettlesome horse he could get, when 
but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make 
it carry him half over the county in a morning, 
and join the hunters when there were any out, — 
and yet he loved the old great house and gardens 
too, but had too much spirit to be always pent 
up within their boundaries, — and how their uncle, 
grew up to man's estate as brave as he was hand- 
some, to the admiration of every body, but of 
their great-grandmother Field most especially ; 
and how he used to carry me upon his back when 
I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
older than me — many a mile when I could not 



1 84 iBesa^e of JElla. 

walk for pain ; and how in after-life he became 
lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) 
make allowances enough for him when he was 
impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently 
how considerate he had been to me when I Avas 
lame-footed ; and how, when he died, though he 
had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had 
died a great while ago, such a distance there is 
betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death, 
as I thought, pretty well at first, but afterwards 
it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not 
cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think 
he would have done if I had died, yet I missed 
him all day long, and knew not till then how 
much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, 
and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be 
alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we 
quarrelled sometimes,) rather than not have him 
again, and was uneasy without him, as he their 
poor uncle must have been v/hen the doctor took 
off his limb. Here the children fell a-crying, and 
asked if their little mourning which they had on 
was not for Uncle John, and they looked up, 
and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, 
but to tell them some stories about their pretty 
dead mother. Then I told how, for seven long 
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, 
yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice 
W n ; and, as much as children could under- 
stand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens, — when 
suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first 
Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of 
representment, that I became in doubt which of 
them stood there before me, or whose that bright 



DreamsCbflDren ; B 1Rever\?» 185 

hair was ; and while I stood gazing", both the 
children gradually grew fainter to my view, reced- 
ing, and still receding, till nothing at last but two 
mournful features were seen in the uttermost dis- 
tance, which, without speech, strangely impressed 
upon me the effects of speech: **We are not of 
Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The 
children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are 
nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams. We are 
only what might have been, cind must wait upon 
the tedious shores of the Lethd millions of ages be- 
fore we have existence, and a name" ; — and im- 
mediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated 
in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen 
asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by 
my side, — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone 
forever. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 



IN A LETTER TO B. F. , ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH 

^VALES. 

My dear F. : — When I think how welcome the 
sight of a letter from the world where you were 
born must be to you in that strange one to which 
you have been transplanted, I feel some compunc- 
tious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it 
is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at 
our distance. The weary world of waters between 
us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to con- 
ceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch 
across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that 
one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writ- 
ing for posterity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. 
Rowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Strephon 
in the Shades." Cowley's Post-Angel is no more 
than would be expedient in such an intercourse. 
One drops a packet at Lombard Street, and in 
twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland gets it as 
fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whispering 
through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let 
down from the moon, with yourself at one end, 
and the man at the other ; it would be some balk 
to the spirit of conversation, if you knew the dia- 
logue exchanged with that interesting theosophist 
i86 



2)i9tant CorresponDents. 187 

would take two or three revolutions of a higher 
luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, 
you may be some parasangs nigher that primitive 
idea — Plato's man — than we in England here have 
the honor to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three 
topics : news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter I 
include all non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious 
in themselves, but treated after my fashion, non- 
seriously. And first, for news. In them the most 
desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall 
be true. But what security can I have that what I 
now send you for truth shall not, before you get it, 
unaccountably turn into a lie ? For instance, our 
mutual friend P. is at this present writing — f/ij/ Now 
— in good health, and enjoys a fair share of 
worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. 
This is natural and friendly. But at this present 
reading— ^yoz^r Now — he may possibly be in the 
Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason 
ought to abate something of your transport (i. e. , 
at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least consider- 
ably to modify it. I am going to the play this 
evening, to have a laugh with Munden. You 
ha!ve no theatre, I think you told me, in your land 

of d d realities. You naturally lick your lips 

and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, 
and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why 
it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823. This 
confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of hvo 
presents, is in a degree common to all postage. 
But if I sent you word to Bath or Devizes, that I 
was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening, 
though at the moment you received the intelli- 
gence my full feast of fun would be over, yet 



1 88 ;666a^0 of :611a. 

there would be for a day or two after, as you 
would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my 
mental palate, which would give rational encour- 
agement for you to foster, a portion, at least, of 
the disagreeable passion which it was in part my 
intention to produce. But ten months hence, your 
envy or your sympathy would be as useless as a 
passion spent upon the dead. Not only does truth, 
in these long intervals unessence herself, but (what 
is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction, for 
the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the 
voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put 
upon you some three years since — of Will Weath- 
erall having married a servant-maid ! I remember 
gravely consulting you how we were to receive 
her — for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected ; 
and your no less serious replication in the matter ; 
how tenderly you advised an abstemious intro- 
duction of literary topics before the lady, with a 
caution not to be too forward in bringing on the 
carpet matters more within the sphere of her intel- 
ligence ; your deliberate judgment or rather wise 
suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, 
and mops could, with propriety, be introduced 
as subjects ; whether the conscious avoiding of 
all such matters in discourse would not have a 
worse look than the taking of them casually in 
our way ; in what manner we should carry our- 
selves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weather- 
all being by ; whether we should show more deli- 
cacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, 
by treating Becky with our customary chiding 
before her, or by an unusual deferential civility 
paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but 
thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble sta- 



Blatant CorreaponOents. 189 

tion. There were difEculties, I remember, on both 
sides, which you did me the favor to state with the 
precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness 
of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your 
solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I was valuing 
myself upon this flam put upon you in New 
South Wales, the devil in England, jealous pos- 
sibly of any lie-children not his own, or working 
after my copy, has actually instigated our friend 
(not three days since) to the commission of a mat- 
rimony, which I had only conjured up for your 
diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. 
Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its truest sense, 
you will see, my dear F. , that news from_ me 
must become history to you ; which I neither 
profess to write nor indeed care much for reading. 
No person, under a diviner, can with any pros- 
pect of veracity, conduct a correspondence at such 
an arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might 
thus interchange intelligence with effect; the 
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in with 
the true present time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but 
then we are no prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better 
with that. This kind of dish, above all, requires 
to be served up hot ; or sent off in water-plates, 
that your friend may have it almost as warm as 
yourself. If it have time to cool, it is the most 
tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled 
at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that, 
travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to 
some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, 
or something, hung so fantastically and invitingly 
over a stream — was it ? — or a rock ? — no matter, 
^but the stillness and the repose, after a weary 



journey 't is likely, in a languid moment of his 
Lordship's hot, restless life, so took his fancy that 
he could imagine no place so proper, in the event 
of his death, to lay his bones in. This was all 
very natural and excusable as a sentiment, and 
shows his character in a very pleasing light. But 
when from a passing sentiment it came to be an 
act ; and when, by a positive testamentary dis- 
posal, his remains were actually carried all that 
way from England ; who was there, some des- 
perate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask 
the question, Why could not his Lordship have 
found a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a 
tree as green and pendent, with a stream as em- 
blematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or 
in Devon .? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, 
freighted, entered at the Custom-House (startling 
the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a 
ship. Conceive it pawed about and handled be- 
tween the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians, — a 
thing of its delicate texture, — the salt bilge wet- 
ting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lus- 
tring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners 
have some superstition about sentiments) of be- 
ing tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitia- 
tory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a 
quietus so foreign to the deviser's purpose !) but 
it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. 
Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall 
we say.? — I have not the map before me — ^jostled 
upon four men's shoulders — baiting at this town 
— stopping to refresh at t' other village — waiting 
a passport here, a license there ; the sanction of 
the magistracy in this district, the concurrence of 
the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it 



2)i0tant CorresponDenta, 191 

arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded, 
from a brisk sentiment, into a feature of silly- 
pride or tawdry, senseless affectation. How few 
sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we can set 
down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea-worthy. 
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, 
though contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling 
corpuscula which should irradiate a right friendly 
epistle, — your puns and small jests are, I appre- 
hend, extremely circumscribed in their sphere of 
action. They are so far from a capacity of being 
packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce 
endure to be transported by hand from this room 
to the next. Their vigor is as the instant of their 
birth. Their nutriment for their brief existence is 
the intellectual atmosphere of the bystanders ; or 
this last is the fine slime of Nilus — the melior lutus 
— whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as 
the sol pater to their equivocal generation. A pun 
hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its pris- 
tine flavor, than you can send a kiss. Have you 
not tried in some instances to palm off a yester- 
day's pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered .? 
Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not 
seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. 
It was like picking up at a village ale-house a 
two- days' old newspaper. You have not seen 
it before, but you resent the stale thing as an 
affront. This sort of merchandise above all re- 
quires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory 
laugh, must be coinstantaneous. The one is 
the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. 
A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A 
pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a 



192 Mbs^^s of JElia, 

mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, 
if the polished surface were two or three minutes 
(not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in 
giving back its copy ? 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins s island comes 
across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the 
Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among 
you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What 
must you be willing by this time to give for the 
sight of an honest man ! You must almost have 
forgotten how we look. And tell me, what your 
Sydneyites do ? are they th . . v . ng all day 
long .? Merciful heaven ! what property can stand 
against such depredation ! The kangaroos — your 
Aborigines — do they keep their primitive sim- 
plicity un-Europe tainted, with those little short 
fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature 
to the pickpocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they 
are rather lamely provided, a pi'iori! but if the hue- 
and-cry were once up, they would show us as fair 
a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest locomotor 
in the colony. We hear the most improbable 
tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the 
young Spartans among you are born with six 
fingers, which spoils their scanning .? It must 
look very odd ; but use reconciles. For their 
scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take 
it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they 
turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. 
Is there much difference to see, too, between the 
son of a th , . f, and the grandson ? or where does 
the taint stop ? Do you bleach in three or in four 
generations } I have many questions to put, but 
ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter 



2)i6tant Correspondents, 193 

time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do 
you grow your own hemp? What is your staple 
trade,- — exclusive of the national profession, I 
mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, are some of 
your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as 
when we used to exchange good-morrows out of 
our old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare 
Court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that 
quiet corner ? Why did I ? — with its complement 
of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, 
the theme of jesting ruralists,! picked my first lady- 
birds ! My heart is as dry as that spring some- 
times proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to 
the space that is between us ; a length of passage 
enough to render obsolete the phrases of our 
English letters before they can reach you. But 
^while I talk, I think you hear me, — thoughts dally- 
ing with vain surmise, — 

Aye me ! while these the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old 
man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, 
before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom 
you left children have become sage matrons 
while you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss 

W r (you remember Sally W r) called upon 

us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you 
knew, die off every year. Formerly, I thought 
that death was wearing out, — I stood ramparted 
about so with many healthy friends. The depart- 
ure of J. W., two springs back, corrected my 
delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been 
busy. If you do not make haste to return there 
will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine. 
13 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not 
a grown sweeper,- — old chimney-sweepers are 
by no means attractive, — but one of those tender 
novices, blooming through their first nigritude, 
the maternal washings not quite effaced from the 
cheek, — such as come forth with the dawn, or 
somewhat earlier, with their little professional 
notes sounding like the peep, peep, of a young 
sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark should I pro- 
nounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom 
anticipating the sunrise ? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim 
specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses. 

I reverence these young Africans of our own 
growth — these almost clergy imps, who sport 
their cloth without assumption ; and from their 
little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nip- 
ping air of a December morning, preach a lesson 
of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it 
was to witness their operation ! to see a chit no 
bigger than one's self, enter, one knew not by 
what process, into what seemed they27z^<:es^z'^;7zz', 
— to pursue him in imagination, as he went sound- 
ing on through so many dark stifling caverns, 
horrid shades !^— to shudder with - the idea, that 
194 



Zbc t^xMsc ot Cbimnei2*Sweeper6. 195 

*'now, surely, he must be lost forever ! " — to re- 
vive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered de- 
light, — -and then (O fulness of delight !) running 
out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable 
phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished 
weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved 
over a conquered citadel ! I seem to remember 
having been told that a bad sweep was once left 
in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way 
the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, cer- 
tainly ; ilot much unlike the old stage direction 
in Macbeth, where the '* Apparition of a child 
crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small 
gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give 
him a penny. It is better to give him twopence. 
If it be starving weather, and to the proper 
troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed 
heels (no unusual accompaniment) be super- 
added, the demand on thy humanity will surely 
rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which 
I have understood to be the sweet wood yclept 
sassafras. This wood, boiled down to a kind of 
tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and 
sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the 
China luxury. I know not how thy palate may 
relish it ; for myself, with every deference to the 
judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind 
kept open a shop (the only one he avers in 
London) for the vending of this " wholesome and 
pleasant beverage," on the south side of Fleet 
Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — /he only 
Salopian house — I have never ventured to dip my 
own particular lip in a basin of his commended in- 



196 JEsBdi^B ot :6lia. 

gredients — a cautious premonition to the olfacto- 
ries constantly whispering tome, that my stomach 
must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. 
Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed 
in dietetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation 
of the organ it happens, but I have always found 
that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to 
the palate of a young chimney-sweeper, — whether 
the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) 
do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, 
which are sometimes found (in dissections) to 
adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged 
practitioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that 
she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the 
lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of 
the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive ; 
— but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the 
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey 
a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. 
Being penniless, they will yet hang their black 
heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one 
sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than 
those domestic animals — cats — Avhen they purr 
over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is 
something more in these sympathies than phi- 
losophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without 
reason, that this is the 07ily Salopian house ; yet 
be it known to thee, reader, — if thou art one who 
keepest what are called good hours, thou art 
happily ignorant of the fact — he hath a race of 
industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under 
open sky, dispense the same savory mess to 
humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, 



XL\)c praise of (Ibimnei3*Sweepers. 197 

when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home 
from his midnight cups, and the hard-lianded 
artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature 
labors of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the 
manifest disconcerting of the former, for the 
honors of the pavement. It is the' time when, in 
summer, between the expired and the not yet 
relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair 
metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odors. 
The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'er-night 
vapors in grateful coffee, curses the ungenial 
fume as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, 
and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's 
darling, — the delight of the early gardener, who 
transports his smoking cabbages by break of day 
from Hammersmith to Covent Garden's famed 
piazzas, — the delight, and oh ! I fear, too often 
the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Himshouldst 
thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pen- 
dent over the grateful steam, regale him with a 
sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three half- 
pennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter 
(an added half-penny) — so may thy culinary fires, 
eased of the o'er-charged secretions from thy worse- 
placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to 
the welkin, — so may the descending soot never 
taint thy costly well-ingredienced soups, — nor the 
odious cry, quick-reaching from street to street, 
of the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines 
from adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual 
scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street 
affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; 
the low-bred triumph they display over . the 



198 iBeea^s of J6lta, 

casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentle- 
man. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a 
young sweep with something more than forgive- 
ness. In the last winter but one, pacing along 
Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation 
when I walked westward, a treacherous slide 
brought me upon my back in an instant. I 
scrambled up with pain and shame enough, — yet 
outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing 
had happened, — when the roguish grin of one of 
these young wits encountered me. There he 
stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the 
mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) 
in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of 
the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out 
at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many 
a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, 3^et twink- 
ling through all with such a joy, snatched out of 
desolation, that Hogarth — but Hogarth has got 
him already (how could he miss him ?) in the 
March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman, — there 
he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, 
as if the jest was to last forever, — with such a 
maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in 
his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath 
absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been 
content, if the honor of a gentleman might endure 
it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till 
midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness 
of what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair 
of rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a 
casket presumably holding such jewels ; but, 
methinks, they should take leave to " air" them 
as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine 



Zbc Ipraise ot Chimnc^^Swccpcxe. 199 

gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me 
bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth 
of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of 
those white and shining ossifications, strikes me 
as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and an 
allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite ex- 
tinct ; a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility — 
and, doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and 
double night of their forlorn disguisement, often- 
times lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, 
derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. 
The premature apprenticements of these tender 
victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, 
to clandestine and almost infantile abductions ; 
the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often 
discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise 
to be accounted for), plainly hint at some forced 
adoptions ; many noble Rachels, mourning for 
their children even in our days, countenance the 
fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a 
lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young 
Montagu be but a solitary instance of good fort- 
une out of many irreparable and hopeless defJia- 
tions. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few 
years since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of 
the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, 
chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was 
especially a connoisseur) — encircled with curtains 
of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets in- 



200 iBsda^e ot J6lla. 

woven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter 
and softer than the lap where Venus lulled 
Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after all 
methods of search had failed, at noonday, fast 
asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creat- 
ure, having somehow confounded his passage 
among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by 
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this 
magnificent chamber; and, tired with his tedious 
explorations, was unable to resist the delicious 
invitement to repose, which he there saw ex- 
hibited ; so creeping between the sheets very 
quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and 
slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the 
Castle. But I cannot help seeming to perceive a 
confirmation of what I have just hinted at in this 
story. A high instinct was at work in the case, 
or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child 
of that description, with whatever weariness he 
might be visited, would have ventured, under such 
a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to un- 
cover the sheets of a duke's bed, and deliberately 
to lay himself down between them, when the rug, 
or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still 
far above his pretensions — is this probable, I 
would ask, if the great power of nature, which 
I contend for, had not been manifested within 
him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this 
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me 
that he must be) was allured by some memory, 
not amounting to full consciousness, of his condi- 
tion in infancy, when he was used to be lapped 
by his mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as 
he there found, into which he was now but creep- 



Zbc ipraise of Gbimnes*Svveepers. 201 

ingback as into his proper Incunabula, and resting- 
place. By no other theory than by this sentiment 
of a preexistent state (as I may call it) can I 
explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon 
any other system so indecorous, in this tender, 
but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed 
by a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently 
taking place, that in some sort to reverse the 
wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he 
instituted an annual feast of chimney-sv/eepers, 
at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host 
and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in 
Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of 
St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week 
before to the master-sweeps in and about the 
metropolis, confining the invitation to their 
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling 
would get in among us, and be good-naturedly 
winked at ; but our main body were infantry. 
One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon 
his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our 
party, but by tokens was providentially discovered 
in time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot 
which looks so), was quoited out of the presence 
with universal indignation, as not having on the 
wedding garment ; but in general the greatest 
harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a 
convenient spot among the pens, at the north 
side of the fair, not so far distant as to be imper- 
vious to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but 
remote enough not to be obvious to the interrup- 
tion of every gaping spectator in it. The guests 
assembled about seven. In those little temporary 
parlors three tables were spread with napery, not 



202 iBesa^e ot ;6lia. 

so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely 
hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. 
The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the 
savor. James White, as head waiter, had charge 
of the first table; and myself, with our trusty 
companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the 
other two. There was clambering and jostling, 
you may be sure, who should get at the first 
table, — for Rochester in his maddest days could 
not have done the humors of the scene with more 
spirit than my friend. After some general expres- 
sion of thanks for the honor the company had 
done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp 
the greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest 
of the three), that stood frying and fretting, half- 
blessing, half-cursing '' the gentleman," and im- 
print upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat 
the universal host would set up a shout that tore 
the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth 
startled the night with their brightness. Oh, it 
was a pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in 
the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous say- 
ings, — how he would fit the titbits to the puny 
mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the 
seniors, — how he would intercept a morsel even 
in the jaws of some young desperado, declaring it 
"must to the pan again be browned for it was 
not fit for a gentleman's eating," — how he would 
recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece 
of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising 
them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, 
which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly 
he would deal about the small ale, as if it were 
wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were 
not good, he should lose their custom ; with a 



^bc ipraise ot Cbimnc^^SweeperB, 203 

special recommendation to wipe the lip before 
drinking. Then we had our toasts — "The King ! " 

'' The Cloth,"— which, whether they understood 

or not, was equally diverting and flattering ;— and 
for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, 
"May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All 
these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather 
felt than comprehended by his guests, would he 
utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing every 
sentiment with a "Gentlemen, give me leave to 
propose so and so," which was a prodigious com- 
fort to those young orphans ; every now and then 
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be 
squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate 
pieces of those reeking sausages, which pleased 
them mightily, and was the savoriest part, you 
may beUeve, of the entertainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. 

James White is extinct, and with him these sup- 
pers have long ceased. He carried away with 
him half the fun of the world when he died— of 
my world at least. His old clients look for him 
among the pens ; and, missing him, reproach the 
altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of 
Smithfield departed forever. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEG- 
GARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 



The all-sweeping besom of societarian refor- 
mation — your only modern Alcides' club to rid 
the time of its abuses — is uplift with many-handed 
sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the 
bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, 
wallets, bags, — staves, dogs, and crutches, — the 
whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage, 
are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh 
persecution. From the crowded crossing, from 
the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the 
parting Genius of Beggary is with "sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to 
work, this impertinent crusado, or hellu77i ad exier- 
minationeni, proclaimed against a species. Much 
good might be sucked from these Beggars. 

They were the oldest and honorablest form of 
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common 
nature ; less revolting to an ingenious mind than 
to be a suppliant to the particular humors or caprice 
of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, 
parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates 
uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assess- 
ment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very 
depth of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be 
204 



B Complaint ot tbe 5)ecai2 ot JSegsars. 205 

so much nearer to the being a man, than to go m 
livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their re- 
verses ; and when Dionysius from king turned 
schoolmaster, do we feel any thing towards him but 
contempt ? Could Vandyke have made a picture 
of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which 
would have affected our minds with the same 
heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, 
with which we regard his Belisarius begging for 
an obolum P Would the moral have been more 
graceful, more pathetic ? 

The BHnd Beggar in the legend — the father of 
pretty Bessy — w^hose story doggerel rhymes and 
ale-house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate, 
but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine 
through the disguisements, — this noble Earl of 
Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport 
of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his 
hege lord, stripped of all, and seated on the flower- 
ing green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and 
springing daughter by his side, illumining his rags 
and his beggary, — would the child and parent 
have cut a better figure doing the honors of a 
counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon 
the three-foot eminence of some sempstering 
shopboard ? 

In tale or history your beggar is ever the just 
antipode to your King. The poets and roman- 
cical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would 
cah them), when they would most sharply and 
feeUngly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop 
till they have brought down their hero in good 
earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the 
descent illustrates the height he falls from. There 



2o6 B60as0 ot J6lfa. 

is no medium which can be presented to the im- 
agination without offence. There is no breaking 
the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must 
divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere 
nature" ; and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, 
must extend her pale arms, pale with other white- 
ness than of beauty, supplicating lazar alms with 
bell and clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, 
with a converse policy, when they would express 
scorn of greatness without the pity, they show us 
an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a 
Semiramis getting up foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great 
monarch had declined his affections upon the 
daughter of a baker ? yet, do we feel the imagina- 
tion at all violated when we read the ''true ballad," 
where King Cophetua woos the beggar maid ? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of 
pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one prop- 
erly contemns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative 
thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its 
''neighbor grice." Its poor rents and comings-in 
are soon summed up and told. Its pretences to 
property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts 
to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion 
can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor 
man reproaches poor man in the streets with im- 
politic mention of his condition, his own being a 
shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at 
both. No rascally comparative insults a beggar, 
or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not 
in the scale of comparison. He is not tmder 
the measure of property. He confessedly hath 
none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one 



% Complaint of tbe 2)ecas ot ^Beggars, 207 

twitteth him with ostentation above his means. 
No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him 
with mock humility. None jostle with him for 
the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No 
wealthy neighbor seeketh to eject him from his 
tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to 
law with him. If I were not the independent 
gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a 
retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor 
relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and 
true greatness of my mind, to be a beggar. 

Rags, which are the approach of poverty, are 
the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his pro- 
fession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which 
he is expected to show himself in public. He is 
never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly 
behind it. He is not required to put on court 
mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none. 
His costume hath undergone less change than the 
Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe 
who is not obliged to study appearances. The 
ups and downs of the v/orld concern him no longer. 
He alone continueth in one stay. The price of 
stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations 
of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him 
not, or at worst but change his customers. He 
is not expected to become bail or surety for any 
one. No man troubleth him with questioning his 
religion or politics. He is the only free man in 
the universe. 

The mendicants of this great city were so many 
of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them 
than I could the Cries of London. No corner of 
a street is complete without them. They are as 
•indispensable as the ballad singer ; and in their 



2o8 Essays of Blia, 

picturesque attire as ornamental as the signs of 
old London. They were the standing morals, 
emblems, mementos, dial-mottoes, the spital ser- 
mons, the books for children, the salutary checks 
and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy 
citizenry : 

Look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line 
the wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern 
fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their 
ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) 
of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, 
• — whither are they fled ? or into what corners, 
blind as themselves, have they been driven, out 
of the wholesome air and sun-warmth ; immersed 
between four walls, in what withering poorhouse 
do they endure the penalty of double darkness, 
where the chink of the dropt half-penny no more 
consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the 
sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of 
the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves ; 
and who will farm their dogs ? Have the over- 
seers of St. L caused them to be shot ? or were 

they tied up in sacks, and dropt into the Thames, 

at the suggestion of B , the mild rector 

of .? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, 
most classical, and, at the same time, most 
English of the Latinists ! — who has treated of 
this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog 
and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, 
the ''Epitaphium in Canem,"or '* Dog's Epitaph." 
Reader, peruse it, and say if customary sights, 



^ Complaint ot tbe Becaig ot JSegears. 209 

which could call up such gentle poetry as this, 
were of a nature to do more harm or good to the 
moral sense of the passengers through the daily 
thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectas, 
Dux caeco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 
Prsetenso hine atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum 
Ineertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus. 
Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium 
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras, 
Lamentis, noctemque oeulis ploravit obortam. 
Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 
Ad latus interea jaeui sopitus herile, 
Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 
Auresque atque animum arreetus, seu frustula amice 
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub noete parabat. 
Hi mores, hase vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte seneet^ ; 
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite cseeum 
Orbavit dominum : prisci sed gratia f aeti 
Ne tota intereat, longos deleeta per annos, 
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque eanemque 
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum, 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps. 

His guide and guard : nor, while my service lasted, 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant, 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : 

14 



21 o JBssa'QB Of BUa. 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 

From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 

Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 

The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 

I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 

Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 

Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive 

At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 

And common portion in his feast of scraps ,. 

Or when night wam'd us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life, 
Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it to attest. 
In long and lasting union to attest. 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some 
months past a well-known figure, or part of the 
figure of a man, who used to glide his comely up- 
per half over the pavements of London, wheeling 
along with most ingenious celerity upon a ma- 
chine of wood : a spectacle to natives, to foreign- 
ers, and to children. He was of a robust make, 
with a florid, sailor-like complexion, and his head 
was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a 
natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a 
prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at 
the mighty man brought down to his own level. 
The common cripple would despise his own pusil- 
lanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty 
heart of this half-limbed giant. Few but must 
have noticed him, for the accident which brought 
him low took place during the riots of 1780, and 



% Complaint ot tbe 5)ecas ot Beggars, 211 

he has been a groundling- so long. He seemed 
earthborn, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigor 
from the soil which he neighbored. He was a 
grand fragment : as good as an Elgin marble. 
The nature which should have recruited his reft 
legs and thighs was not lost, but only retired into 
his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I 
heard a tremendous voice thundering and growl- 
ing, as before an earthquake, and, casting down 
my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed 
that had started at his portentous appearance. 
He seemed to want but his just stature to have 
rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was 
as the man part of a centaur, from which the 
horse half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan 
controversy. He moved on, as if he could have 
made shift with yet half of the body-portion which 
was left him. The os sublime was not wanting ; 
and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon 
the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven 
this out-of-door trade ; and now that his hair is 
grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way 
impaired, because he is not content to exchange 
his free air and exercise for the restraints of a 
poorhouse, he is expiating his contumacy in one 
of those houses (ironically christened) of Correc- 
tion. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a 
nuisance, which called for legal interference to 
remove ? or not rather a salutary and a touching 
object, to the passers-by in a great city ? Among 
her shows, her museums, and supplies of ever- 
gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumu- 
lation of sights — endless sights — is a great city ; 
or for what else is it desirable ?) was there not 



212- 



JSsaags ot Blla, 



room for one Lusus, (not Natures, indeed, but) 
Accide7itiu7}i P What if in forty-and-two years' 
going- about, the man had scraped tog-ether enough 
to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran), 
of a few hundreds, — -whom had he injured? — ■ 
whom had he imposed upon ? The contributors 
had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What 
if after being exposed all day to the heats, the 
rains, and the frosts of heaven, — shuffling his 
ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful 
motion, — he was enabled to retire at night to 
enjoy himself at a club of his felloAV-cripples over 
a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge 
was gravely brought against him by a clergyman 
deposing before a House of Commons' Committee, 
— was this, or was his truly paternal consider- 
ation, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather 
than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent at least 
with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he 
has been slandered with, — a reason that he should 
be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying 
way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a 
sturdy vagabond ? 

There was a Yorick once, whom it w^ould not 
have shamed to have sat down at the cripple's 
feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, 
and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. 
''Age, thou hast lost thy breed." 

Half of these stories about prodigious fortunes 
made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' 
calumnies. One was much talked of in the public 
papers some time since, and the usual charitable 
inferences deduced. A clerk in the bank was sur- 
prised with the announcement of a five-hundred- 
pound legacy left him by a person whose name 



B Complaint of tbe Deca^ of Beggars, 213 

he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily- 
morning walks from Peckham (or some village 
thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had 
been his practice for the last twenty years to drop 
his half-penny duly into the hat of some blind 
Bartimeus, that sat begging alms by the way-side 
in the Borough. The good old beggar recognized 
his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when 
he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that 
had been half a century perhaps in the accumu- 
lating), to his old bank friend. Was this a story 
to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against 
giving an alms to the blind ? — or not rather a 
beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the 
one part, and noble gratitude on the other ! 

I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind 
of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no 
eyes in the sun. 

Is it possible I could have steeled my purse 
against him ? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, 
imposition, imposture — give, and ask no questions. 
Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have un- 
awares (like this bank clerk) entertained angels. 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 
distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor 
creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes be- 
fore thee, do not Stay to inquire whether the ''seven 
small children, " in whose name he implores thy 
assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not 
into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a half- 
penny. It is good to believe him. If he be not 
all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate 



214 B65a^0 ot iBiin. 

father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou 
hast reHeved an indigent bachelor. When they 
come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping 
tones, think them players. You pay your money 
to see a comedian feign these things, which, 
concerning these poor people, thou canst not 
certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 



I 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 



Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
friend M. was obliging enough to read and ex- 
plain to me, for the tirst seventy thousand ages 
ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the 
living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this 
day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by 
their great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
* ' Mundane Mutations, " where he designates a kind 
of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the 
Cook's Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, 
that the art of roasting or rather broiling (which I 
take to be the elder brother) was accidentally dis- 
covered in the manner following : The swine- 
herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one 
morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his 
hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, 
Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of 
playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly 
are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of 
straw, which kindled quickly, spread the confla- 
gration over every part of their poor mansion, till 
it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cot- 
tage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, 
you may think it), what was of much more im- 
portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no 
jess than nine in number, perished. China pigs 

21^ 



2i6 iBsm^s of jeila* 

have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, 
from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo 
was in the utmost consternation, as you may 
think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, 
which his father and he could easily build up 
again with a very few branches, and labor of an 
hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the 
pigs. While he was thinking what he should 
say to his father, and wringing his hands over 
the smoking remnants of one of those untime- 
ly sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike 
any scent which he had before experienced. 
What could it proceed from ? — not from the burnt 
cottage, — he had smelt that smell before, — indeed 
this was by no means the first accident of the 
kind which had occurred through the negligence 
of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did 
it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or 
flower. A premonitory moistening at the same 
time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not 
what to think. He next stooped down to feel the 
pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He 
burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied 
them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some 
of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come 
away with his fingers, and for the first time in 
his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him 
no man had known it), he tasted — crackling! 
Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not 
burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers 
from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke 
into his slow understanding, that it was the pig 
that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so dehcious ; 
and surrendering himself up to the new-born 
pleasure, he fell to tearing up v.- hole handfuls of 



% dissertation upon IRoast ^ig. 217 

the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was 
cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, 
when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, 
armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how 
affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young 
rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which 
Bo-bo heeded not any more than if the}^ had been 
flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced 
in his lower regions had rendered him quite 
callous to any inconveniences he might feel in 
those remote quarters. His father might lay on, 
but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had 
fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little 
more sensible of his situation, something like the 
following dialogue ensued. 

'* You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring ? Is it not enough that you haA^e burnt 
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and 
be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, 
and I know not what ; — what have you got there, 
I say ? " 

*'0 father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste 
how nice the burnt pig eats. " 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He 
cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever 
he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half 
by main force into the fist of Ho-ti, still shouting 
out: *'Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only 
taste ; O Lord ! " — with such like barbarous ejacu- 
lations, cramming all the while as if he would 
choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped 



2i8 jBbb^^s of ;!£lia. 

the abominable thing, wavering whether he 
should not put his son to death for an unnatural 
young monster, when the crackling scorching his 
fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the 
same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some 
of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he 
would for a pretence, proved not altogether dis- 
pleasing to him. In conclusion (for the manu- 
script here is a little tedious) both father and son 
fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till 
they had dispatched all that remained of the 
litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
escape, for the neighbors would certainly have 
stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
who could think of improving upon the good meat 
which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's 
cottage was now burnt down more frequently 
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time for- 
ward. Some would break out in broad day, 
others in the nighttime. As often as the sow 
farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in 
a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more 
remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed 
to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At 
length they were watched, the terrible mystery 
discovered, and father and son summoned to take 
their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize 
town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food 
itself produced in court, and verdict about to be 
pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged 
that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits 
stood accused, might be handed into the box. He 
handled it, and they all handled it ; and burning 



H 2)i35crtatlon upon IRoast t>iQ* 219 

their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done 
before them, and nature prompting to each of 
them the same remedy, against the face of all the 
facts, and the clearest charge which judge had 
ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, 
townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present, — 
without leaving the box, or any manner of con- 
sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous 
verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked 
at the manifest iniquity of the decision ; and when 
the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought 
up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. 
In a few days his Lordship's town-house was 
observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, 
and now there was nothing to be seen but fire in 
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously 
dear all over the district. The insurance offices 
one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 
and slighter every day, until it was feared that 
the very science of architecture would in no long 
time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of 
firing houses continued, till in process of time, 
says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, 
who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or 
indeed of any other animal, might be cooked {hurnt, 
as they called it) without the necessity of con- 
suming a whole house to dress it. Then first 
began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by 
the string or spit came in a century or two later ; 
I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow de- 
grees, concludes the manuscript, do the most 
useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts make 
their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 



2 20 Bssa^B ot JBM* 

above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy 
pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting 
houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pre- 
text and excuse might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole modus edihilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — prin- 
ceps ohsonioj'um. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things be= 
tween pig and pork — those hobbydeho3"s — but a 
young and tender suckling — under a moon old — 
guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck 
of the amor imtnunditicB, the hereditary failing of 
the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not 
broken, but something between a childish treble 
and a grumble — the mild fore-runner, ox prcBludiuni 
of a grunt 

He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled, — but what 
a sacrifice of the exterior tegument ? 

There is no flavor comparable, I will, contend, 
to that of the crisp, tawny, well-w^atched, not 
over- roasted, cracklings as it is well called, — the 
very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure 
at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle re- 
sistance, — Vv^th the adhesive oleaginous — O call 
it not fat ! but an indefinable sweetness growing 
up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped 
in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first inno- 
cence — the cream and quintessence of the child- 
pig's yet pure food, the lean, no lean, but a 

kind of animal manna, — or, rather, fat and lean 
(if it must be so) so blended and running into each 
other, that both together make but one ambrosian 
result, or common substance. 



21 2>ia3ertation upon IRoaet ipig. 221 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemed 
rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, 
that he is so passive to. How equably he twirl- 
eth round the string ! Now he is just done. To 
see the extreme sensibility of that tender age ! he 
hath wept out his pretty eyes— radiant jellies — 
shooting stars. 

See him in the dish,^ his second cradle, how meek 
he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent 
grow up to the grossness and indocility which too 
often accompany maturer swinehood.? Ten to 
one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, 
an obstinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in 
all manner of filthy conversation, — from these sins 
he is happily snatched away, — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous, — no clown curseth, 
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon, 
— no coal-heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages, 
— he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach 
of the judicious epicure, — and for such a tomb 
might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. 
She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, 
if not sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a 
tender conscienced person would do well to pause 
— too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and 
excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' 
kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish 
— but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth 
not with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger 
might barter her consistently for a mutton chop. 



222 JEssa^s ot JBlin. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provo- 
cative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to 
the criticalness of the censorious palate. The 
strong man may batten on him, and the weakling 
refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle 
of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and 
not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good 
throughout. No part of him is better or worse 
than another. He helpeth, as far as his little 
means extend, all around. He is the least envi- 
ous of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
impart a share of the good things of this life which 
fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
friend. I protest I take as great an interest in 
my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper 
satisfactions, as in mine own. ' ' Presents, " I often 
say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, par- 
tridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame 
villatic fowl "), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of 
oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. 
I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue 
of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. 
One would not, like Lear, " give every thing.'' 
I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an 
ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavors, to 
extradomiciliate, or send out of the house, slight- 
ingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not 
what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predes- 
tined, I may say, to my individual palate — it argues 
an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind 
at school. My good old aunt, who never parted 
from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a 



% 2)i63ertation upon IRoagt ipig. 223 

sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, 
had dismissed me one evening with a smoking 
plumb-cake fresh from the oven. In my way to 
school (it was over London bridge) a grayheaded 
old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no 
pence to console him with, and in the vanity of 
self-denial, and in the very coxcombry of charity, 
schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — the whole 
cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is 
on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self- 
satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end of the 
bridge my better feelings returned, and I burst 
into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to 
my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away 
to a stranger that I had never seen before, and 
who might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and 
then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be 
taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not an- 
other — would eat her nice cake, — and what should 
I say to her the next time I saw her, — how naughty 
I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the 
odor of that spicy cake came back upon my recol- 
lection, and the pleasure and curiosity I had taken 
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent 
it to the oven, and how disappointed she would 
feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth 
at last, — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of 
alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of good- 
ness ; and above all I wished never to see the face 
again of that insidious, good-for-nothing old gray 
impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt 
to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 



2 24 B33as0 of Blia, 

any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline 
is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a 
philosophical light merely) what effect this process 
might have towards intenerating and dulcifying 
a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the 
flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. 
Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn 
the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of 
the practice. It might impart a gusto. 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and 
maintained with much learning and pleasantry on 
both sides, ''Whether, supposing that the flavor of 
a pig who obtained his death by whipping {^per 
flagellationem extreinani), superadded a pleasure 
upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, 
is man justified in using that method of putting the 
animal to death? " I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a 
few bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and 
brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, 
dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion 
tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, 
steep them in shalots, stuff them out with planta- 
tions of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot 
poison them, or make them stronger than they 
are, — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BE- 
HAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 



As a single man, I have spent a good deal of 
my time in noting down the infirmities of Married 
People, to console myself for those superior 
pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by re- 
maining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their 
wives ever made any great impression upon me, 
or had much tendency to strengthen me in those 
anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago 
upon more substantial considerations. What 
often est offends me at the house of married per- 
sons where I visit, is an error of quite a different 
description ; — it is that they are too loving. 

Not too loving neither ; that does not explain 
my meaning. Besides, why should that offend 
me ? The very act of separating themselves from 
the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment 
of each other's society, implies that they prefer 
one another to all the world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this 
preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in 
the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you 
cannot be in their company a moment without 
being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open 
avowal, ihatyou are not the object of this prefer- 
15 225 



226 B53as6 ot BUa, 

ence. Now there are some things which give no 
offence, while imphed or taken for granted merely ; 
but expressed, there is much offence in them. If 
a man were to accost the first homely-featured, or 
plainly-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, 
and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome 
or rich enough for him, and he could not marry 
her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill 
manners ; yet no less is implied in the fact, that 
having access and opportunity of putting the 
question to her, he has never yet thought fit to 
do it. The young woman understands this as 
clearly as if it were put into words ; but no rea- 
sonable young woman would think of making 
this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right 
have a married couple to tell me by speeches, 
and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, 
that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. 
It is enough that I know I am not ; I do not 
want this perpetual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches 
may be made sufficiently mortifying ; but these 
admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is 
brought out to insult me, may accidentally im- 
prove me ; and in the rich man's houses and pict- 
ures, his parks and gardens, I have a temporary 
usufruct at least. But the display of married hap- 
piness has none of these palliatives ; it is through- 
out pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and 
not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning 
of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to 
keep their advantage as much out of sight as 
possible, that their less favored neighbors, seeing 
little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to 



a :fi3acbelor'0 Complaint. 227 

question the right. But these married monopolists 
thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into 
our faces. 

Nothing- is to me more distasteful than that 
entire complacency and satisfaction which beam 
in the countenances of a new-married couple, — 
in that of the lady particularly ; it tells you, that 
her lot is disposed of in this world ; ihsd jyou can 
have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none, 
nor wishes either, perhaps ; but this is one of those 
truths which ought, as I have said before, to be 
taken for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give 
themselves, founded on the ignorance of us un- 
married people, would be more offensive if they 
were less irratioucil. We will allow them to un- 
derstand the mysteries belonging to their own 
craft better than we, who have not had the hap- 
piness to be made free of the company ; but 
arrogance is not content within these limits. If 
a single person presume to offer his opinion in 
their presence, though upon the most indifferent 
subject, he is immediately silenced as an incom- 
petent person. Nay, a young married lady of 
my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, 
had not changed her condition above a fortnight 
before, in a question which I had the misfortune 
to differ from her, respecting the properest mode 
of breeding oysters for the London market, had the 
assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old 
bachelor as I could pretend to know any thing 
about such matters ! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing 
to the airs which these creatures give themselves 
when they come, as they generally do, to have 



2 28 )B66n>Q3 ot Mlin. 

children. When I consider how little of a rarity 
children are, — that every street and blind alley 
swarms with them, — that the poorest people com- 
monly have them in most abundance, — that there 
are few marriages that are not blest with at least 
one of these bargains, — how often they turn out 
ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, 
taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, 
disgrace, the gallows, etc., — I cannot for my life 
tell w^hat cause for pride there can possibly be in 
having them. If they were young phoenixes, 
indeed^ that were bom but one in a year, there 
might be a pretext. But when they are so com- 
mon 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which 
they assume with their husbands on these occa- 
sions. Let /hem look to that. But why we, who 
are not their natural-born subjects, should be ex- 
pected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense, — 
our tribute and homage of admiration, — I do not 
see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant 
even so are the young children " ; so says the 
excellent office in our Prayer-Book appointed for 
the churching of women. " Happy is the man 
that hath his quiver full of them " ; so say I ; but 
then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us 
that are weaponless ; — let them be aiTOws, but 
not to gall and stick us. I have generally ob- 
served that these arrows are double-headed : they 
have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the 
other. As for instance, where you come into a 
house which is full of children, if you happen to 
take no notice of them (you are thinking of some- 
thing else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their 



H :ffiacbeIor'5 Complaint. 229 

innocent caresses), you are set down as untract- 
able, morose, a hater of children. On the other 
hand, if you find them more than usually engag- 
ing, — if you are taken with their pretty manners, 
and set about in earnest to romp and play with 
them, some pretext or other is sure to be found 
for sending them out of the room ; they are too 

noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like 

children. With one or other of these forks the 
arrow is sure to hit. 

I could forgive their jealous }?■, and dispense with 
toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; 
but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to 
love them, where I see no occasion, — to love a 
whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indis- 
criminately, — to love all the pretty dears, because 
children are so engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my 
dog " ; that is not always so very practicable, par- 
ticularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you 
or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser 
thing, — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, 
a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we 
last parted when my friend went away upon a 
long absence, I can make a shift to love, because 
I love him, and anything that reminds me of him ; 
provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt 
to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But 
children have a real character, and an essential 
being of themselves ; they are amiable or unami- 
able per se ; I must love or hate them as I see 
cause for either in their qualities. A child's nat- 
ure is too serious a thing to admit of its being 
regarded as a mere appendage to another being, 
and to be loved or hated accordingly ; they stand 



230 iBesa'QS ot jSlia, 

with me upon their own stock, as much as men 
and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is 
an attractive age, — there is something in the 
tender years of infancy that of itself charms us ? 
That is the very reason why I am more nice about 
them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest 
thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate 
creatures which bear them, but the prettier the 
kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it 
should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs 
not much from another in glory ; but a violet 
should look and smell the daintiest. I was al- 
v/ays rather squeamish in my w^omen and chil- 
dren. 

But this is not the worst ; one must be admitted 
into their familiarity at least, before they can com- 
plain of inattention. It implies visits, and some 
kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man 
with whom you have lived on a friendly footing 
before marriage — if you did not come in on the 
wife's side — if you did not sneak into the house in 
her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of 
intimacy before their courtship was so much as 
thought on, — look about you — your tenure is pre- 
carious — before a twelvemonth shall roll over 
your head, you shall find your old friend gradually 
grow cool and altered towards you, and at last 
seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have 
scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon 
whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did 
not commence ay7er the period of his jnarriage. 
With some limitations, they can endure that* 
but that the good man should have dared to enter 
into a solemn league of friendship in which they 
were not consulted, though it happened before 



% JBacbelor's Complaint. 231 

they knew him, — before they that are now man 
and wife ever met, — this is intolerable to them. 
Every long friendship, every old authentic inti- 
macy, must be brought into their ofQce to be new 
stamped with their currency, as a sovereign 
prince calls in the good old money that was 
coined in some reign before he was born or 
thought of, to be new marked and minted with 
the stamp of his authority, before he will let it 
pass current in the world. You may guess what 
luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal 
as I am in these new niintings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to 
insult and worm you out of their husband's confi- 
dence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of 
wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that 
said good things, bu^a7t oddi'/y, is one of the ways ; — 
they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; 
— till at last the husband, who used to defer to your 
judgment, and would pass over some excrescences 
of understanding and manner for the sake of a 
general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) 
which he perceived in you, begins to suspect 
whether you are not altogether a humorist, — a 
fellow well enough to have consorted with in his 
bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be intro- 
duced to ladies. This may be called the staring 
way ; and is that which has oftenest been put in 
practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way 
of irony ; that is, where they find you an object 
of especial regard with their husband, who is not 
so easily to be shaken from the lasting attach- 
ment founded on esteem which he has conceived 
towards you, by never qualified exaggerations to 



232 JBeeti^e of BUa. 

cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, 
who understands well enough that it is all done 
in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt 
of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and 
by relaxing a little on his part, and taking dowm 
a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to 
the kindly level of moderate esteem — that ' ' decent 
affection and complacent kindness " towards 
you, where she herself can join in sympathy with 
him without much stretch and violence to her 
sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accom- 
plish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with 
a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mis- 
take what it was which first made their husband 
fond of you. If an esteem for something excel- 
lent in your moral character was that which riv- 
eted the chain which she is to break, upon any 
imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in 
your conversation, she will cry, ' ' I thought, my 

dear, you described your friend, Mr.' , as 

a great wit.'*" If, on the other hand, it was for 
some supposed charm in your conversation that 
he first grew to like you, and was content for this 
to overlook some trifling irregularities in your 
moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of 
these she as readily exclaims : "This, my dear, 

is your good Mr. ! " One good lady whom 

I took the liberty of expostulating with for not 
showing me quite so much respect as I thought 
due to her husband's old friend, had the candor to 

confess to me that she had often heard Mr. 

speak of me before marriage, and that she had 
conceived a great desire to be acquainted with 
me, but that the sight of me had very much dis- 



B Mncbclox*B Complaint. 233 

appointed her expectations ; for from her hus- 
band s representations of me, she had formed a 
notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like 
looking man (I use her very words), the very 
reverse of which proved to be the truth. This 
was candid, and I had the civility not to ask her 
in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard 
of personal accomplishments for her husbands 
friends which differed so much from his own ; for 
my friend's dimensions as near as possible approx- 
imate to mine ; he standing five feet five in his 
shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by 
about half an inch ; and he no more than myself 
exhibited any indications of a martial character in 
his air or countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which I 
have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at 
their houses. To enumerate them all would be a 
vain endeavor. I shall therefore just glance at 
the very common impropriety of which married 
ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if we were 
their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when 
they use us with familiarity, and their husbands 
with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me 
the other night two or three hours beyond my 
usual time of supping, while she was fretting 

because Mr. did not come home till the 

oysters were all spoiled rather than she would be 
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his 
absence. This was reversing the point of good 
manners ; for ceremony is an invention to take 
off the uneasy feeling which we derive from 
knowing ourselves to be less the object of love 
and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other 
person is. It endeavors to make up, b}^ superior 



234 iBss^y^s ot Blia. 

attentions in little points, for that invidious prefer- 
ence which it is forced to deny in the greater. 
Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and 
withstood her husband's importunities to go to 
supper, she would have acted according to the 
strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony 
that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, 
beyond the point of a modest behavior and 
decorum ; therefore I must protest against the 
vicarious gluttony of Cerasea, who at her own 
table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was 
applying to with great good-will, to her husband 
at the other end of the table, and recommended a 
plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my 
unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I 

excuse the wanton affront of 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married 
acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let 
them amend and change their manners, or I 
promise to record the full-length English of their 
names, to the terror of all such desperate offenders 
in future. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



The casual sight of an old playbill, which I 
picked up the other day — I know not by what 
chance it was preserved so long — tempts me to 
call to mind a few of the players who make the 
principal figure in it It presents the cast of parts 
in the "Twelfth Night" at the old Drury Lane 
Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There is some- 
thing very touching in these old remembrances. 
They make us think how we once used to read a 
playbill, — not, as now peradventure, singling out 
a favorite performer, and casting a negligent eye 
over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down 
to the very mutes and servants of the scene, — when 
it was a matter of no small moment to us whether 
Whitfield or Packer took the part of Fabian ; when 
Benson, and Burton, and PhiUimore — names of 
small account — had an importance beyond what 
we can be content to attribute now to the time's 
best actors. ''Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore." What 
a full Shakespearean sound it carries ! how fresh 
to memory arise the image, and the manner of 
the gentle actor ! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within 
the last ten or fifteen years can have no adequate 
notion of her performance of such parts as 
OpheHa; Helena, in ''All's Well that Ends 



236 Essays of Blia. 

Well " ; and Viola in this play. Her voice had 
latterly acquired a coarseness which suited well 
enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those 
days it sank, with her steady melting eye, into 
the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her 
memory now chiefly lives — in her youth were 
outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no 
giving an account how she delivered the disguised 
story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech 
that she had foreseen so as to weaA^e it into an 
harmonious period, line necessarily following 
line, to make up the music — yet I have heard it 
so spoken, or rather read, not without its grace 
and beauty — but when she had declared her 
sister's history to be a "blank," and that she 
* ' never told her love, " there was a pause, as if the 
story had ended, — and then the image of the 
" worm in the bud " came up as a new suggestion, 
— and the heightened image of " Patience " still 
followed after that as by some growing (and not 
mechanical) process, thought springing up after 
thought, I would almost say, as they were watered 
by her tears. So in those line lines — 

Write loyal cantos of contemned love — 
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills- 
there was no preparation made in the foregoing 
image for that which was to follow. She used no 
rhetoric in her passion, or it was Nature's own 
rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed 
altogether without rule or law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the 
pride of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. 
She was particularly excellent in ker unbending 



On Borne of tbe ©ID Bctors, 237 

scenes in conversation with the Clown. I have 
seen some Olivias — and those very sensible 
actresses too — who in these interlocutions have 
seemed to set their wits at the jester, and to vie 
conceits with him in downright emulation. But 
she used him for her sport like what he was, to trifle 
a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dis- 
missed, and she to be the Great Lady still. She 
touched the imperious fantastic humor of the 
character with nicety. Her fine, spacious person 
filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, 
been so often misunderstood, and the general 
7ne7'its of the actor who then played it, so unduly 
appreciated, that I shall hope for pardon if I a.m 
a little prolix upon these points. 
- Of all the actors who flourished in my time — ■ 
a melancholy phrase if taken aright, reader — 
Bensley had most of the swell of soul, was great- 
est in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emo- 
tions consequent upon the presentment of a great 
^idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical 
enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among players. 
None that I remember possessed even a portion 
of that fine madness which he threw out in Hot- 
spur's famous rant about glory, or the transports 
of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the 
fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at 
times the inspiriting effect, of the trumpet. His 
gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embar- 
rassed by affectation ; and the thorough-bred 
gentleman was uppermost in every movement. 
He seized the moment of passion with greatest 
truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before 
the time ; never anticipating or leading you to 



238 B65ai20 of Blia, 

anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and 
artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do 
the poet's message simply, and he did it with as 
genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver 
the errands of the gods. He let the passion or 
the sentiment do its own work without prop or 
bolstering. He would have scorned to mounte- 
bank it ; and betrayed none of that cleverness 
which is the bane of serious acting. For this 
reason, his lago w;as the only endurable one 
which I remember to have seen. No spectator 
from his action could divine more of his artifice 
than Othello was supposed to do. His confes- 
sions in soliloquy alone put you in possession 
of the mystery. There were no by-intimations 
to make the audience fancy their own discern- 
ment so much greater than that of the Moor — 
who commonly stands like a great helpless 
mark set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity 
of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. 
The lago of Bensley did not go to work so 
grossly. There was a triumphant tone about 
the character, natural to a general conscious- 
ness of power ; but none of that petty vanity 
which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon 
any little successful stroke of its knavery — as 
is common with your small villains and green 
probationers in mischief. It did not clap or 
crow before its time. It was not a man setting 
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at 
other children who are mightily pleased at be- 
ing let into the secret ; but a consummate vil- 
lain entrapping a noble nature into toils, against 
which no discernment was available, where the 
manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed 



On Some ot tbe ©ID Bctors. 239 

dark, and without motive. The part of Malvo- 
lio, in the "Twelfth Night," was performed by 
Bensley with a richness and a dignity, of which 
(to judge from some recent castings of that char- 
acter) the very tradition must be worn out from 
the stage. No manager in those days would have 
dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Par- 
sons ; when Bensley w^as occasionally absent from 
the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation 
to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially 
ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. 
He is cold, austere, repelling ; but dignified, con- 
sistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over- 
stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort 
of Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold 
chain with honor in one of our old round-head 
families, in the service of a Lambert or a Lady 
Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are 
misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the proper 
levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal 
contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call it 
which you will), is inherent, and native to the 
man, not mock or affected, which latter only are 
the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is 
at the best unlovely, but neither bufifoon nor con- 
temptible. Llis bearing is lofty, a little above his 
station, but probably not much above his deserts. 
We see no reason why he should not have been 
brave, honorable, accomplished. His careless 
committal of the ring to the ground (which he was 
commissioned to restore to Csesario), bespeaks a 
generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect on 
all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a man 
of education. We must not confound him with 
the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is 



240 J633ai26 ot JBM. 

master of the household to a great princess ; a 
dignity probably conferred upon him for other re- 
spects than age or length of service. Olivia, at 
the first indication of his supposed madness, de- 
clares that §he " would not have him miscarry for 
half of her dowry." Does this look as if the char- 
acter was meant to appear little or insignificant ? 
Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face — of 
what? — of being ''sick of self-love" ; — but with 
a gentleness andconsiderateness and which could 
not have been, if she had not thought that this 
particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His 
rebuke to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is 
sensible and spirited ; and when we take into con- 
sideration the unprotected condition of his mis- 
tress, and the strict regard with which her state of 
real or dissembled mourning would draw the eyes 
of the world upon her house affairs, Malvolio 
might feel the honor of the family in some sort in 
his keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had 
any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it, 
• — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects 
at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant 
to be represented as possessing estimable quali- 
ties, the expression of the duke, in his anxiety to 
have him reconciled, almost infers : " Pursue him, 
and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused 
state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
seems never to desert him. He argues highly 
and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and phi- 
losophizes gallantly upon his straw.* There 

* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning 
wild fowl ? 

Ma/. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit 
a bird. 



®n Some of tbe ©ID Bctors. 241 

must have been some shadow of worth about the 
man ; he must have been something more than a 
mere vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in office — 
before Fabian and Maria could have ventured 
sending him upon a court errand to Olivia. There 
was some consonancy (as he would say) in the 
undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold 
even for that house of misrule. 

Bensley accordingly threw over the part an air 
of Spanish loftiness. He looked,~spake, and moved 
like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, 
opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed 
bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was 
something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big 
and swelling, but you could not be sure that it 
was hollow. You might wish to see it taken 
down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. 
He was magnificent from the outset ; but when 
the decent sobrieties of the character began to give 
way, and the position of self-love, in his conceit 
of the Countess' affection, gradually began to 
work, you would have thought that the hero of 
La Mancha in person stood before you. How 
he went smiling to himself ! with what ineffable 
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain ! what 
a dream it was ! you were infected with the illu- 
sion, and did not wish that it should be removed ! 
you had no room for laughter ! if an unseasonable 
reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a 
deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, 
that can lay him open to such frenzies, — but in 
truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy 

Clown. What tliinkest thou of his opinion ? 
Mai. I think nobly' of the soul, and no way approve of 
his opinion. 



242 B06ai36 of JElin, 

while it lasted, — you felt that an hour of such 
mistake was worth an age with the eyes open. 
Who would not wish to live but for a day in the 
conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, 
the Duke would have given his principality but 
for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or v/aking, to 
have been so deluded. The man seemed to tread 
upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head 
in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. O ! shake not 
the castles of his pride, — endure yet for a season, 
bright moments of confidence, — "standstill, ye 
watches of the element," that Malvolio may be 
still in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! But fate and 
retribution say no ! I hear the mischievous 
titter of Maria, the witty taunts of Sir Toby, the 
still more insupportable triumph of the foolish 
knight, the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked, and 
*'thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown 
hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that 
I never saw the catastrophe of this character, 
while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic 
interest. There was good foolery too. Few now 
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage 
lost in him ! Lovegrove, who came nearest to the 
old actors, revived the character some few seasons 
ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd 
was 2'/, as it came out of nature's hands. It might 
be said to remain m pun's naturalihiis. In express- 
ing slowness of apprehension this actor surpassed 
all others. You could see the first dawn of an 
idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climb- 
ing up by little and little, with a painful process, 
till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight 
"conception — its highest meridian. He seemed to 
keep back his intellect, as some have had the 



®n Some ot tbe ©ID Bctors. 243 

power to retard their pulsation. The balloon 
takes less time in filling than it took to cover the 
expansion of his broad moony face over all its 
quarters with expression. A glimmer of under- 
standing would appear in a corner of his eye, and 
for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his fore- 
head would catch a little intelligence and be a 
long time in communicating it to the remainder. 
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better 
than five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in 
the gardens of Gray's Inn — they were then far 
finer than they are now — the accursed Verulam 
Buildings had not encroached upon all the east 
side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, 
and shouldering away one of two of the stately 
alcoves of the terrace, — the survivor stands gap- 
ing and relationless as if it remembered its brother," 
— they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns 
of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten, — have 
the gravest character, their aspect being altogether 
reverend and law-breathing, — Bacon has left the 
impress of his foot upon their gravel walks ; tak- 
ing my afternoon solace on a summer day upon 
the aforesaid terrace, a comely, sad personage 
came towards me, whom, from his grave air and 
deportment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers 
of the Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful fore- 
head, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. 
As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I 
was passing him with that sort of sub-indicative 
token of respect which one is apt to demonstrate 
towards a venerable stranger, and which rather de- 
notes an inclination to greet him than any positive 
motive of the body to that effect, — a species of 
humility and will-worship which I observe, nine 



244 J666a^6 Of JSlfa. 

times Out of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the 
person it is offered to — when the face turning full 
upon me, strangely identified itself with that of 
Dodd. Upon close inspection I w^as not mistaken. 
But could this sad, thoughtful countenance be the 
same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so 
often under circumstances of gayety ; which I 
had never seen without a smile, or recognized but 
as the usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally 
flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so 
impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested 
of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, 
in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable- 
impertinences ? Was this the face, full of thought 
and carefulness, that had so often divested itself 
at will of every trace of either to give me diversion, 
to clear my cloudy face for two or three hours at 
least of its furrows ? Was this the face — manly, 
sober, intelligent — which I had so often despised, 
made mocks at, made merry w^ith ? The remem- 
brance of the freedoms which I had taken with 
it came upon me with a reproach of insult. I 
could have asked it pardon. I thought it looked 
upon me with a sense of injury. There is some- 
thing strange as well as sad in seeing actors, your 
pleasant fellows particularly, subjected to and suf- 
fering the common lot ; their fortunes, their casu- 
alties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene, 
their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. 
We can hardly connect them with more awful 
responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took 
place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted 
the stage some months, and, as I learned after- 
wards, had been in the habit of resorting daily to 
these gardens almost to the day of his decease. 



®n Some ot tbe ©ID Hctors* 245 

In these serious walks probably he was divesting 
himself of many scenic and some real vanities, 
weaning himself from the frivolities of the lesser 
and the greater theatre, doing gentle penance for 
a life of no very reprehensible fooleries, taking off 
by degrees the buffoon mask, which he might 
feel he had worn too long, and rehearsing for a 
more solemn cast of part. Dying, he "put on 
the weeds of Dominic. " * 

If few can remember Dodd, many yet living 
will not easily forget the pleasant creature, who 
in those days enacted the part of the Clown to 
Dodd's Sir Andrew. Richard, or rather Dicky 
Suett, — for so in his lifetime he delighted to be 
called, and time hath ratified the appellation, — 
lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of 
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender 
years were dedicated. There are who do yet re- 
member him at that period, — his pipe* clear and 
harmonious. He would often speak of his chor- 
ister days when he was "Cherub Dicky." 

What clipped his wings or made it expedient 
that he should exchange the holy for the profane 
state ; whether he had lost his good voice (his best 
recommendation to that office), like Sir John, 

* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice 
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to 
have been a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu 
which no length of study could have bettered. My merry 
friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, 
and recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was 
irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the 
identical knight of the preceding evening with a " Save you, 
Sir And7-e'wy Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual 
address from a stranger, with a courteous, half-rebuking wave 
of the hand, put him off with an " Away, FooL''' 



246 JEssa^s ot Blia. 

" with hallooing and singing of anthems " ; of 
whether he was adjudged to lack something, even 
in those early years, of the gravity indispensable 
to an occupation which professeth to ' ' commerce 
with the skies," — I could never rightly learn ; but 
we find him, after the probation of a twelvemonth 
or so, reverting to a secular condition, and become 
one of us. 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out 
of which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are 
hewed. But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore 
glad — be any part of sanctity, then might the robe 
of Motley, with which he invested himself with 
so much humility after his deprivation, and which 
he wore so long with so much blameless satisfac- 
tion to himself and to the public, be accepted for 
a surplice, — his white stole and a/be. 

The first fruits of his secularization was an 
engagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at 
which theatre he commenced, as I have been told, 
with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's 
characters. At the period in which most of us 
knew him, he was no more an imitator then he 
was in any true sense himself imitable. 

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. 
He came in to trouble all things with a welcome 
perplexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. 
He was known, like Puck, by his note, — Ha! Ha! 
Ha ! sometimes deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! v/ith 
an irresistible accession, derived, perhaps, re- 
motely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign 
to his prototype of O La ! Thousands of hearts yet 
respond to the chuckling O La ! of Dicky Suett, 
brought back to their remembrance by the faithful 
transcript of his friend Tvlathew's mimicry. The 



.'^ 



On Some of tbe ©ID Bctors. 247 

*' force of nature could no further go." He drolled 
upon the stock of these two syllables richer than 
the cuckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in 
his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, 
half a grain) of it, he could never have supported 
himself upon those two spider's strings, which 
served him (in the latter part of his unmixed 
existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must 
have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him 
down ; the weight of a frown had staggered him, 
a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on 
he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of 
his, with Robin Goodfellow, '' through brake, 
through briar," reckless of a scratched face or a 
torn doublet. 

Shakespeare foresaw him when he framed his 
fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett 
stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a slippery 
tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without- 
pain-delivered jest ; in words, light as air, venting 
truths deep as the centre ; with idlest rhymes 
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear 
in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery- 
hatch. 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be 
m^ore of personal favorites with the town than any 
actors before or after. The difference, I take it, 
was this : Jack was more hdoved for his sweet, 
good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was 
more liked for his sweet, good-natured, no preten- 
sions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with 
Bannister's performance of Walter in the ''Chil- 
dren in the Wood " ; but Dicky seemed like a thing 
of Love, as Shakespeare says, too young to know 



248 1S6BZ^3 ot jElla. 

what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. 
Evil fled before him, — not as from Jack, as from 
an antagonist, — but because it could not touch 
him any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was 
delivered from the burden of that death, and when 
death came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch 
Dicky, it is recorded of him by Robert Palmer, 
who kindly watched his exit, that he received the 
last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tran- 
quillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, 
worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph, — 
La! O La ! Bobby ! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) 
commonly played Sir Toby in those days ; but there 
is a solidity of wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff 
which he did not quite fill out. He was as much 
too showy as Moody (who sometimes took the 
part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin 
there was an air of swaggering gentility about 
Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a slight 
infusion of the footman. His brother Bob (of 
recent memory), who was his shadow in every- 
thing while he lived, and dwindled into less than 
a shadow afterwards, was 2i gentleman with a little 
stronger infusion of the latter ingredient ; that was 
all. It is amazing how a little of the more or less 
makes a difl'erence in these things. When you 
saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant * you said : 
" What a pity such a pretty fellow was only a 
servant ! " When you saw Jack figuring in Cap- 
tain Absolute you thought you could trace his 
promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the 
handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought 

* " Ilisrh Life Below Stairs." 



©n Some ot tbe ©ID Bctors. 249 

him a commission. Therefore, Jack in Dick Am- 
let was insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocrit- 
ical, and insinuating : but his secondary or sup- 
plemental voice still more decisively histrionic 
than his common one. It was reserved for the 
spectator ; and the dramatis personcB were sup- 
posed to know nothing at all about it. The lies 
of Young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph 
Surface, were thus marked out in a sort of italics 
to the audience. This secret correspondence 
with the company before the curtain (which is 
the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely 
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the 
more highly artificial comedy, of Congreve or of 
Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of 
reality (so indispensable to scenes of interest) is 
not required, or would rather interfere to diminish 
your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe 
in such characters as Surface, — the villain of arti- 
ficial comedy, — even while you read or see 
them. If you did, they would shock and not 
divert you. When Ben, in "Love for Love," 
returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue 
occurs at his first meeting with his father : 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, 
since I saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been ! Been far enough, an' that be all. — 
Well, father, and how do all at home ? how does brother 
Dick, and brother Val ? 

Sir Sanipso7i. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead 
these two years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Bett. Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's 
dead, as you say, — well, and how .'' — I have a many questions 
to ask you. 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in 



250 )BBB^^3 Of JBlitL* 

real life would be revolting, or rather in real life 
could not have coexisted with the warm-hearted 
temperament of the character. But when you 
read it in the spirit with which such playful selec- 
tions and specious combinations rather than strict 
rnetapJirases of nature should be taken, or when 
you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor 
does, wound the moral sense at all. For what is 
Ben— the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives 
us — but a piece of satire, — a creation of Con- 
greve's fancy, — a dreamy combination of all the 
accidents of a sailor's character, — his contempt 
of money, — his credulity to women, — with that 
necessary estrangement from home which it is 
just within the verge of credibility to suppose 
might produce such an hallucination as is here 
described. We never think the worse of Ben for 
it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But 
when an actor comes, and instead of the delight- 
ful phantom — the creature dear to half-belief — 
which Bannister exhibited, — displays before our 
eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor 
• — a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing 
else — when, instead of iuA^esting it with a delicious 
confusedness of the head, and a veering undi- 
rected goodness of purpose, — he gives to it a 
downright daylight understanding, and, a full 
consciousness of its actions ; thrusting forward 
the sensibilities of the character with a pretence 
as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be 
judged by them alone, — we feel the discord of the 
thing ; the scene is disturbed ; a real man has 
got in among the dramatis personce, and puts 
them out. We want the sailor turned out. We 
feel that his true place is not behind the curtain, 
but in the first or second gallery. 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE 
LAST CENTURY. 



The artificial comedy, or comedy of manners, 
is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Far- 
quhar show their heads once in seven years only, 
to be exploded and put down instantly. The 
times cannot bear them. Is it for a few wild 
speeches, an occasional license of dialogue ? I 
think not altogether. The business of their dra- 
matic characters will not stand the moral test. 
We screw every thing up to that. Idle gallantry 
in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an 
evening, startles us in the same way as the 
alarming indications of profligacy in a son or 
ward in real life should startle the parent or 
guardian. We have no such middle emotions as 
dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine 
playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, 
and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes 
which inspect real vices with their bearings upon 
two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or in- 
trigue (not reducible in life to the point of strict 
morality), and take it all for truth. We substi- 
tute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him 
accordingly. We try him in our courts, from 
which there is no appeal to the dramatis pet'soncB, 
his peers. We have been spoiled with — not sen- 
timental comedy — but a tyrant far more perni- 

251 



252 iBssa^e of ;i£lia. 

cious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, 
the exclusive and all-devouring drama of common 
life ; where the moral point is every thing ; 
where, instead of the fictitious half-believed per- 
sonages of the stage (the phantoms of old 
comedy), we recognize ourselves, our brothers, 
aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the 
same as in life, — with an interest in what is going 
on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot 
afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and 
most vital results, to compromise or slumber for 
a moment. What is /here transacting, by no 
modification is made to affect us in any other 
manner than the same events or characters would 
do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire- 
side concerns to the theatre with us. We do not 
go thither, like our ancestor, to escape from the 
pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our ex- 
perience of it ; to make assurance double, and 
take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome 
lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege 
of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All 
that neutral ground of character which stood 
between vice and virtue ; or which in fact was in- 
different to neither, where neither properly was 
called in question ; that happy breathing-place 
from the burden of a perpetual moral questioning 
— the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted 
casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised, as in- 
jurious to the interests of society. The privileges 
of the place are taken away by law. We dare not 
dally with images, or names, of wrong. We 
bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread in- 
fection from the scenic representation of disorder, 
and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that 



Artificial ComeD^ ot tbe Xast Century. 253 

our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up 
in a great blanket surtout of precaution against 
the breeze and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delin- 
quencies to answer for) I am glad for a season to 
take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict 
conscience, — not to live always in the precincts 
of the law-courts, but now and then, for a dream- 
while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling 
restrictions — to get into recesses, whither the 
hunter cannot follow me— 

Secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 

I come back to my cage and my restraint the 
fresher and more healthy for it. I wear my 
shackles more contentedly for having respired 
the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not 
know how it is with others, but I feel the better 
always for the perusal of one of Congreve s — 
nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's 
comedies. I am the gayer at least for it ; and 
I could never connect those sports of a witty 
fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn 
from them to imitation in real life. They are a 
world of themselves almost as much as fairy-land. 
Take one of their characters, male or female 
(with few exceptions they are alike), and place it 
in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation 
shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly 
as the Catos of the pit could desire ; because in 
a modern play I am to judge the right and the 
wrong. The standard oi police is the measure of 
political justice. The atmosphere will blight it ; it 



254 Bssa^s of ^Ua. 

cannot live here. It has got into a moral world, 
where it has no business, from which it must 
needs fall headlong ; as dizzy, and incapable of 
making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit 
that has wandered unawares into the sphere of 
one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its own 
world do we feel the creature is so bad ? The 
P'ainalls and the Mirabells, the Dorimants and 
the Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do 
not offend my moral sense ; in fact they do not 
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their 
proper element. They break through no laws or 
conscientious restraints. They know of none. 
They have got out of Christendom into the land — ■ 
what shall I call it ? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia 
of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and manners 
perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative 
scene of things, which has no reference whatever 
to the world that is. No good person can be justly 
offended as a spectator, because no good person 
suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every 
character in these plays — the few exceptions only 
are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worth- 
less. The great art of Congreve is especially 
shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from 
his scenes, some little generosities on the part of 
Angelica perhaps excepted, not only any thing 
like a faultless character, but any pretensions to 
goodness or good feelings w^hatsoever. Whether 
he did this designedly or instinctively, the effect 
is as happy as the design (if design) is bold. I 
used to wonder at the strange power which his 
"Way of the World " in particular possesses of 
interesting you all along in the pursuits of charac- 
ters for whom you absolutely care nothing — for 



Brtificfal ComcDis of tbe Xast Centurg* 255 

you neither hate nor love his personages — and I 
think it is owing to this very indifference for any 
that you endure the whole. He has spread a 
privation of moral light, I will call it, rather 
than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over 
his creations ; and his shadows flit before you 
without distinction or preference. Had he intro- 
duced a good character, a single gush of moral 
feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual 
life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen 
would have only lighted to the discovery of de- 
formities, which now are none, because we think 
them none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his 
and his friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates 
and strumpets, — the business of their brief exist- 
ence, the individual pursuit of lawless gallantry. 
No other spring of action, or possible motive of 
conduct, is recognized ; principles which, univer- 
sally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things 
to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so trans- 
lating them. No such effects are produced in 
their world. When we are among them, we are 
amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge 
them by our usages. No reverend institutions 
are insulted by their proceedings — for they have 
none among them. No peace of families is vio- 
lated — for no family ties exist among them. No 
purity of the marriage bed is stained— for none is 
supposed to have a being. No deep affections 
are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are 
snapped asunder — for affection's depth and wedded 
faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is 
neither right nor v/rong, — gratitude or its opposite, 
— claim or duty, — paternity or sonship. Of what 



256 B50as5 of BUa. 

consequence is it to Virtue, or how is she at all 
concerned about it, whether Sir Simon or Dapper- 
wit, steal away Miss Martha ; or who is the 
father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's chil- 
dren. 

The whole thing is a passing pageant, where 
we should sit as unconcerned at the issues, for 
life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice. 
But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the 
puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare 
not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of 
which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little 
transitory ease excluded. We have not the cour- 
age to imagine a state of things for which there 
■is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to 
the painful necessities of shame and blame. We 
would indict our very dreams. 

Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant 
upon growing old, it is something to have seen 
the "School for Scandal" in its glory. This 
comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but 
gathered some allays of the sentimental comedy 
which followed theirs. It is impossible that it 
should be now acted, though it continues, at long 
intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, 
w^hen Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Sur- 
face. When I remember the gay boldness, the 
graceful, solemn plausibility, the measured step, 
the insinuating voice, — to express it in a word — 
the downright acted villainy of the part, so differ- 
ent from the pressure of conscious actual wicked- 
ness, — the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, 
— which made Jack so deservedly a favorite in that 
character, I must needs conclude the present gen- 
eration of play-goers more virtuous than myself, 



Brtificfal ComeDi2 of tbe Xast Century. 257 

or more dense. I freely confess that he divided 
the palm with me with his better brother ; that, 
in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there 
are passages, — like that, for instance, where 
Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor rela- 
tion, — incongruities which Sheridan was forced 
upon by the attempt to join the artificial with the 
sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy 
the other, — but over these obstructions Jack's 
manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal for 
him no more shocked you, than the easy compli- 
ance of Charles gave you in reality any pleasure ; 
you got over the paltry question as quickly as 
you could, to get back into the regions of pure 
comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The highly 
artificial manner of Palmer in this character coun- 
teracted every disagreeable impression which you 
might have received from the contrast, supposing 
them real, between the two brothers. You did 
not believe in Joseph with the same faith with 
which you believed in Charles. The latter was a 
pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poet- 
ical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incon- 
gruous ; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental 
incompatibilities ; the gayety upon the whole is 
buoyant, but it required the consummate art of 
Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, 
would not dare do the part in the same man- 
ner. He would instinctively avoid every turn 
which might tend to unrealize, and so to make 
the character fascinating. He must take his cue 
from his spectators, who would expect a bad man 
and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other 
as the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted 

17 



258 JSs6a>^e ot JBKa. 

in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disap- 
peared from the windows of my old friend Car- 
rington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard mem- 
ory, — (an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent 
cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good 
man at the hour of death ; where the ghastly ap- 
prehensions of the former, — and truly the grim 
phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not 
to be despised, — so finely contrast with the meek 
complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in like 
honey and butter, — with which the latter submits 
to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who 
wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of 
a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, 
like loving grass, would not covet to meet half- 
way the stroke of such a delicate mower.? John 
Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. 
He was playing to you all the while that he was 
playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had 
the first intimation of a sentiment before it was 
on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you, 
and you were to suppose that his fictitious co- 
flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of 
it. What was it to you if that half reality, the 
husband, was overreached by the puppetry — or 
the thin thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was 
persuaded it was dying of a plethory ? The fort- 
unes of Othello and Desdemona were not con- 
cerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the 
stage in good time, that he did not live to this our 
age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle 
King, too, is gone in good time. His manner 
would scarce have passed current in our day. We 
must love or hate, — acquit or condemn, — censure 
or pity, — exert our detestable coxcombry of moral 



Brtiffctal ComeD^ ot tbe Xaet Century?. 259 

judgment upon every thing-. Joseph Surface, to 
go down now, must be a downright revolting 
villain, — no compromise — his first appearance 
must shock and give horror, — his specious plausi- 
bilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our 
fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, 
knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could 
come, or was meant to come, of them, must 
inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the 
real canting person of the scene, — for the hypoc- 
risy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but 
his brother's professions of a good heart centre in 
downright self-satisfaction) must be loved, and 
Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality 
with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer 
the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, 
whose teasings (while King acted it) were evi- 
dently as much played off at you, as they were 
meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he 
must be a real person, capable in law of sustain- 
ing an injury, — a person towards whom duties 
are to be acknowledged, — the genuine crim. con. 
antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To 
realize him more, his sufferings under his unfort- 
unate match must have the downright pungency 
of life, — must (or should) make you not mirthful 
but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament 
would move you in a neighbor or old friend. The 
delicious scenes which give the play its name and 
zest, must affect you in the same serious manner 
as if you heard the reputation of a dear female 
friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree 
and Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes that live but 
in the sunshine of your mirth — must be ripened 
by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or 



26o BssasB of :611a. 

amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candour — Oh ! fright- 
ful ! — become a hooded serpent. Oh ! who that 
remembers Parsons and Dodd, — the wasp and 
butterfly of the "School for Scandal, " — in those 
two characters ; the charming and natural Miss 
Pope, the perfect gentlewoman, as distinguished 
from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part, 
— would forego the true scenic delight, — the 
escape from life, — the oblivion of consequences, 
— the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflec- 
tion, — those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, 
well won from the world, — to sit instead at one 
of our modern plays, — to have his coward con- 
science (that forsooth must not be left for a 
moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals, — 
dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without 
repose must be, — and his moral vanity pampered 
with images of notional justice, notional benefi- 
cence, lives saved without the spectator's risk, 
and fortunes given away that cost the author 
nothing ? 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast 
in all its parts as this manager s comedy. Miss 
Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady 
Teazle ; and Smith, the original Charles, had re- 
tired when I first saw it. The rest of the charac- 
ters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I 
remember it was then the fashion to cry down 
John Kemble, who took the part of Charles, after 
Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I 
fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a 
certain gayety of person. He brought with him 
no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not 
to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand 
in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet 



Bttificfal ComeDs of tbe Xast Century. 261 

or of Richard to atone for. His failure in these 
parts was a passport to success in one of so oppo- 
site a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the 
weighty sense of Kemble made up for more per- 
sonal incapacity than he had to answer for. His 
harshest tones in this part came steeped and dul- 
cified in good-humor. He made his defects a 
grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he 
managed it, only served to convey the points of 
his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to 
head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one 
of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember 
minutely how he delivered each in succession, 
and cannot by any effort imagine how any of 
them could be altered for the better. No man 
could deliver brilliant dialogue, — the dialogue of 
Congreve or of Wycherley — because none under- 
stood it, — half so well as John Kemble. His Val- 
entine, in '*Love for Love," was, to my recollec- 
tion, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the 
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber 
over the level parts of an heroic character. His 
Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always 
seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed 
and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of trag- 
edy have not been touched by any since him, — 
the playful court-bred spirit in which he conde- 
scended to the players in Hamlet, — the sportive 
relief which he threw into the darker shades of 
Richard, — disappeared with him. He had his 
sluggish moods, his torpors, — but they were the 
halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy, — 
politic savings and fetches of the breath, — hus- 
bandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to 
be an economist,— rather, I think, than errors of 



262 Bssa^s of jeiia. 

judgment. They were, at worst, less painful 
than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigi- 
lance, — the "lidless dragon eyes," — of present 
fashionable tragedy. 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 



Not many nights ago I had come home from 
seeing this extraordinary p erf or taer in ** Cockle- 
top " ; and when I retired to my pillow his whim- 
sical image still stuck by me, in a manner as to 
threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself 
of it by conjuring up the most xjpposite asso- 
ciations. I resolved to be serious. I raised up 
the gravest topics of life : private misery, public 
calamity. All would not do : 

There the antic sate 
Mocking our state — 

his queer visnomy — ^his bewilderin-g costume — -all 
the strange things which he had raked together, 
— his serpentine rod, swaggering about in his 
pocket, — -Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his 
relics, — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder com- 
mentary, — till the passion of latigMer, like grief 
in excess,, relieved itself by its own weight, invit- 
ing the sleep which in the first Instance it had 
driven away. 

But I was not to escape «© easily. No sooner 
did I fall into slumber than the same image, only 
more perplexing, assailed me iia ihe shape of 
dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, 
were dancing before me, like the faces which, 

263 



264 iBsea^e ot Min, 

whether you will or no, come when you have 
been taking opium, — all the strange combinations, 
which this strangest of all strange mortals ever 
shot his proper countenance into, from the day he 
came commissioned to dry up the tears of the 
town for the loss of the now almost forgotten 
Edwin. O for the power of the pencil to have 
fixed them when I awoke ! A season or two 
since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I 
do not see why there should not be a Munden 
gallery. In richness and variety the latter would 
not fall far short of the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, 
one (but what a one it is !) of Liston ; but Mun- 
den has none that you can properly pin down, 
and call his. When you think he has exhausted 
his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare 
with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an 
entirely new set of features like Hydra. He is 
not one, but legion ; not so much a comedian, as 
a company. If his name could be multiplied like 
his countenance it might fill a playbill. He, and 
he alone, literally makes faces ; applied to any 
other person the phrase is a mere figure, denoting 
certain modifications of the human countenance. 
Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, 
as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them 
out as easily. I should not be surprised to see 
him some day put out the head of a river-horse ; 
or come forth a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered 
metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher 
Curry — in old " Dornton " — diffuse a glow of sen- 
timent which has made the pulse of a crowded 
theatre beat like that of one man ; when he has 



Qn the acting of ^unDen. 265 

come in aid of the pulpit, doing- good to the moral 
heart of a people. I have seen some faint 
approaches to this sort of excellence in other 
players. But in the grand grotesque of farce 
Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied 
as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no 
followers. The school of Munden began, and 
must end, with himself. 

Can any man wonder, like him ? Can any man 
see ghosts like him? ox fight with his own shadow 
— " SESSA" — as he does in that strangely-neglect- 
ed thing, the "Cobbler of Preston" — where the 
alternations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, 
and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the 
brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if 
some Arabian Night were being acted before him ? 
Who like him can' throw, or ever attempted to 
throw, a preternatural interest over the com- 
monest daily-life objects } A table or a joint- 
stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiv- 
alent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with 
constellatory importance. You could not speak 
of it with more deference, if it were mounted into 
the firmament. The beggar in the hands of 
Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of 
Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and 
ennobles what it touches. His pots and his 
ladles are as grand and primal, as the seething 
pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A 
tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to 
a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton 
in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the 
commonplace material of life, like primeval man 
with the sun and stars about him. 



J 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



PREFACE. 

BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA. 



This poor g-entleman, who for some months 
past has been in declining way, hath at length 
paid his final tribute to nature. 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The 
humor of the thing, if ever there were much in it, 
was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years'" and 
a half existence has been a tolerable duration for 
a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much 
which I have heard objected to my late friend's 
writings was well founded. Crude they are, I 
grant you — a sort of unlicked incondite things — 
villainously pranked in an affected array of antique 
modes and phrases. They had not been his, if 
they had been other than such ; and better it is, 
that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing 
quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) 
that should be strange to him. Egotistical 
they have been pronounced by some who did 
not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, 

269 



270 ;6s5as6 ot iBlia* 

was often true only (historically) of another ; as 
in a former Essay (to save many instances) — 
where under the_;?rs/ person (his favorite figure) 
he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country 
boy placed at a London school, far from his 
friends and connections, — in direct opposition 
to his own early history. If it be egotism to 
imply and twine with his own identity the griefs 
and affections of another — making himself many, 
or reducing many unto himself, then is the skilful 
novelist, who all along brings in his hero or hero- 
ine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of 
all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused 
of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser 
dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, 
under cover of passion uttered by another, often- 
times gives blameless vent to his most inward 
feelings, and expresses his own story modestly } 

My late friend was in many respects a singular 
character. Those who did not like him, hated 
him ; and some, who once liked him, afterwards 
became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he 
gave himself too little concern what he uttered, 
and in whose presence. He observed neither 
time nor place, and would e'en out with what 
came uppermost. With the severe religionist 
he would pass for a free-thinker ; while the other 
faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded 
themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few 
understood him ; and I am not certain that at all 
times he quite understood himself. He too much 
affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed 
doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal 
hatred. He would interrupt the gravest discus- 
sion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not 



Ipreface. 271 

quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it 
Your long and much talkers hated him. The 
informal habit of his mind, joined to an invet- 
erate impediment of speech, forbade him to be 
an orator ; and he seemed determined that no one 
else should play that part when he was present. 
He was petit and ordinary in person and appear- 
ance. I have seen him sometimes in what is 
called good company, but where he has been a 
stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd 
fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, 
he would stutter out some senseless pun (not 
altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), 
which has stamped his character for the evening. 
It was hit or miss with him ; but nine times out 
of ten, he contrived by this device to send away 
a whole company his enemies. His conception 
rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest 
impromptus had the appearance of effort. He 
has been accused of trying to be witty, when in 
truth he was but struggling to give his poor 
thoughts articulation. He chose his companions 
for some individuality of character which they 
manifested. Hence, not many persons of science 
and few professed literati, were of his councils. 
They were, for the most part, persons of uncer- 
tain fortune ; and, as to such people commonly 
nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of 
settled (though moderate) income, he passed with 
most of them for a great miser. To my knowl- 
edge this was a mistake. His intimados, to con- 
fess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged- 
regiment. He found them floating on the 
surface of society ; and the color, or something 
else, in the- weed pleased him. The burrs stuck 



272 JBsen^e of JEKa. 

to him — but they were good and loving burrs for 
all that. He never greatly cared for the society 
of what are called good people. If any of these 
were scandalized (and offences were sure to 
arise), he could not help it. When he had been 
remonstrated with for not making more conces- 
sions to the feelings of good people, he would 
retort by asking, what one point did these good 
people ever concede to him.? He w^as temper- 
ate in meals and diversions, but always kept a 
little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the 
use of the Indian weed he might be thought a 
little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a 
solvent of speech. Marry — as the friendly vapor 
ascended, how his prattle would curl up some- 
times with it ? the ligaments which tongue-tied 
him were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded 
a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or 
rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests 
were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories 
to be found out. He felt the approaches of age; 
and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw 
how slender were the ties left to bind him. Dis- 
coursing with him latterly on this subject, he ex- 
pressed himself with apettishness which I thought 
unworthy of him. In our walks about his sub- 
urban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some 
children belonging to a school of industry had 
met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, 
in an especial manner to htm. ''They take me 
for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. 
He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of 
looking like any thing important and parochial 
He thought th^t he approached nearer to that 



preface. 273 

stamp daily. He had a general aversion from 
being treated like a grave or respectable character, 
and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age 
that should so entitle .him. He herded always, 
while it was possible, with people younger than 
himself. He did not conform to the march of 
time, but was dragged along in the procession. 
His manners lagged behind" his years. He was 
too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never 
sat gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions 
of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented 
the impertinence of manhood. These were weak- 
nesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to 
explicate some of his writings. 

18 



ELAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE/^ 



I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than 
to range at will over the deserted apartments of 
some fine old family mansion. The traces of 
extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than 
envy ; and contemplations on the great and good, 
whom we fancy in succession to have been its 
inhabitants, weave for us illusions incompatible 
with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vani- 
ties of foolish present aristocracy. The same 
difference of feeling, I think, attends us between 
entering an empty and a crowded church. In the 
latter it is chance but some present human frailty, 
an act of inattention on the part of some of the 
auditory, or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain- 
glory on that of the preacher puts us by our best 
thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occa- 
sion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of 
holiness } Go alone on some week-day, borrow- 
ing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the 
cool aisles of some country church ; think of the 
piety that has kneeled there ; the congregations, 
old and young, that have found consolation there, 
the meek pastor, the docile parishioner. With no 
disturbing emotions, no cross-conflicting compar- 
isons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till 
thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as 

275 



276 JBesn^B of BUa, 

the marble effigies that kneel and weep around 
thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist 
going some few miles out of my road to look 
upon the remains of an old great house, with 
which I had been impressed in this v/ay in in- 
fancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had 
lately pulled it down ; still I had a vague notion 
that it could not all have perished, that so much 
solidity with magnificence could not have been 
crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift 
hand, indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks 
had reduced it to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of every 
thing. Where had stood the great gates ? What 
bounded the courtyard.? Whereabouts did the 
outhouses commence ? A few bricks only lay as 
representatives of that which was so stately and 
so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim 
at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh 
more in their proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at 
their process of destruction, at the plucking of 
every panel I should have felt the varlets at my 
heart. I should have cried out to them to spare 
a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in 
whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read 
Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum 
and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever 
haunted it about me, — it is in mine ears now, as 
oft as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow- 
room. 



:fi5la?ie6mooc in lb — ^sbire. 277 

Why, every plank and panel of that house for 
me had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms, — 
tapestry so much better than painting ; not adorn- 
ing merely, but peopling the wainscots, — at which 
childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shift- 
ing its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise 
its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter 
with those stern bright visages, staring recipro- 
cally, — all Ovid on the walls, in colors vivider 
than his descriptions. Actseon in mid sprout, 
with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and 
the still more provoking, and almost culinary 
coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately 
divesting of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. 
Battle died, — whereinto I have crept, but always 
in the daytime, with a passion of fear ; and a 
sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold, com- 
munication with the past. How shall they build 
it up again ? 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long 
deserted but that traces of the splendor of past 
inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture 
was still standing — even to the tarnished gilt 
leather battledores, and crumbling feathers of 
shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that 
children had once played there. But I was a 
lonely child, and had the range at will of every 
apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered 
and worshiped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the 
mother of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and 
silence, and admiration. So strange a passion 
for the place possessed me in those years, that, 
though there lay — I shame to say how few roods 



278 iBsBa^e of BUa. 

distant from the mansion — half hid by trees, what 
I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell 
which bound me to the house, and such my care- 
fulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, 
that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and 
not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder 
devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty 
brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of 
my infancy. Variegated views, extensive pros- 
pects, — and those at no great distance from the 
house, — I was told of such — what were they to 
me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden ? So 
far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, 
methought, still closer the fences of my chosen 
prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet 
securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. 
I could have exclaimed with that garden-loving 
poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And oh ! so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 
Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
Ana, courteous briars, nail me through ! 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire- 
sides, the low-built roof, parlors ten feet by ten, 
frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home, 
— these were the condition of my birth, the whole- 
some soil which I was planted in. Yet, without 
impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not 
sorry to have had glances of some thing beyond ; 
and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at 
the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. 



JSSlalftesmoot In 1b- — sbfre. 279 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not neces- 
sary to have been born gentle. The pride of an- 
cestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be 
obliged to an importunate race of ancestors ; and 
the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, 
revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De 
Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may 
warm himself into as gay a vanity as these who 
do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal 
merely, and what herald shall go about to strip 
me of an idea .? Is it trenchant to their swords ? 
can it be hacked off as a spur can, or torn away 
like a tarnished garter ? 

What else were the families of the great to us .? 
what pleasure should we take in theif tedious 
genealogies, or their capitulatory brass monu- 
ments ? What to us the uninterrupted current 
of their bloods, if our own did not answer within 
us to a cognate and correspondent elevation ? 

Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 
'scutcheon that hung upon the . time-worn walls 
of thy princely stairs, BLAKESMOoiR ! have I in 
childhood so oft stood poring upon the mystic 
characters, — thy emblematic supporters, with 
their prophetic "Resurgam," — till, every dreg of 
peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very 
Gentility .? Thou wert first in my morning eyes ; 
and of nights hast detained my steps from bed- 
w^ard, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to 
dreaming on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the 
veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics 
have fabled, by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the 
splendid trophy I know not, I inquired not ; but 



28o JBsea^e ot Slia* 

its fading rags, and colors cobweb-stained, told 
that its subjects was of two centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some 
Damoetas, — feeding flocks — not his own, upon 
the hills of Lincoln, — did I in less earnest vindi- 
cate to myself the family trappings of this once 
proud ^gon ? repaying by a backward triumph 
the insults he might possibly haA^e heaped in his 
lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the 
present owners of the mansion had least reason 
to complain. They had long forsaken the old 
house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I was 
left to appropriate to myself what images I could 
pick up, to raise my fancy, or to sooth my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s ; 

and not the present family of that name, who had 
fled the old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family por- 
traits, which as I have gone over, giving them in 
fancy my own family name, — one and then 
another — would seem to smile, reaching forward 
from the canvas to recognize the new relation- 
ship ; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at 
the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of 
fled posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral dra- 
pery, and a lamb — that hung next the great bay 

window — with the bright yellow H shire hair, 

and eyes of watchet hue — so like my Alice ! — I 
am persuaded she was a true Elia, — Mildred 
Elia, I take it. 

Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble marble 
hall with its mosaic pavements and its twelve 
Caesars, — stately busts in marble,— ranged round ; 



:©laftesmoor in 1> — 6bitc. 281 

of whose countenances, young reader of faces as 
I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, 
had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had 
my love. There they stood in the coldness of 
death, yet freshness of immortality. 

Mine, too, thy lofty justice hall, with its one 
chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, 
once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-for- 
getful maiden — so common since that bats have 
roosted in it. 

Mine, too, — whose else.? — thy costl}^ fruit- 
garden, with its sun-baked southern wall ; the 
ampler pleasure garden, rising backwards from 
the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now 
of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, 
saved from the elements, bespake their pristine 
state to have been gilt and glittering ; the verdant 
quarters backwarder still ; and, stretching still 
beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the 
haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmur- 
ing wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the 
centre, god or goddess I wist not ; but child of 
Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer wor- 
ship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves 
than I to that fragmental mystery. 
. Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands 
too fervently in your idol-worship, walks and 
windings of Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of 
mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant 
places ? I sometimes think that as men, when 
they die, do not die at all, so of their extinguished 
habitations, there may be a hope — a germ to be 
revivified. 



POOR RELATIONS. 



A POOR relation is the most irrelevant thing in 
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, 
— an odious approximation, — a haunting con- 
science, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in 
the noontide of our prosperity, — an unwelcome 
remembrancer, — a perpetually recurring mortifi- 
cation, — a drain on your purse, a more intol- 
erable dun upon your pride, — a drawback upon 
success, — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in 
your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent 
in your garment, — death's head at your ban- 
quet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, 
— a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, 
— a frog in your chamber, — a fly in your oint- 
ment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph to your 
enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the one 
thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce 
of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth 
you ''That is Mr. ." A rap, between famil- 
iarity and respect ; that demands, and at the 
same time seems to despair of, entertainment. 
He entereth smiling and — embarrassed. He hold- 
eth out his hand to you to shake, and — draweth 
it back again. He casually looketh in about 
dinner-time — when the table is full. He offereth 
282 



Ipoor IRelations* 283 

to go away, seeing you have company, — but is 
induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your 
visitor's two children are accommodated at a side 
table. He never cometh upon open days, when 
your wife says with some complacency, *'My 

dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." 

He remembereth birthdays, — and professeth he 
is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He 
declareth against fish, the turbot being small — 
yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the 
port, — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the 
remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it 
upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who 
are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil 
enough, to him, The guests think "they have 
seen him before." Every one speculateth upon 
his condition ; and the most part take him to be 
— a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian 
name, to imply that his other is the same with 
your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you 
wish he had less diffidence. With half the famil- 
iarity, he might pass for a casual dependant ; 
with more boldness, he would be in no danger of 
being taken for what he is. He is too humble 
for a friend ; yet taketh on him more state than 
befits a client. He is a worst guest than a coun- 
try tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — 
yet 't is odds, from his garb and demeanor, that 
your guests take him for one. He is asked to 
make one at the whist-table ; refuseth on the 
score of poverty, and — resents being left out. 
When the company break up, he proffereth to go 
for a coach — and lets the servant go. He recol- 
lects your grandfather ; and will thrust in some 



284 B00a^6 ot J6lia. 

mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of the 
family. He knew it when it was not quite so 
flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it now." He 
reviveth past situations, to institute what he call- 
eth— favorable comparisons. With a reflecting 
sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of 
your furniture ; and insults you with a special 
commendation of your window-curtains. He is 
of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, 
but, after all, there was something more comfort- 
able about the old tea-kettle, — which you must 
remember. He dare say you must find a great 
convenience in having a carriage of your own, 
and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. In- 
quireth if you had your arms done on vellum 
yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such-and- 
such had been the crest of the family. His mem- 
ory is unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; 
his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and 
when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into 
a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel 
fairly rid of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that 
is — a female Poor Relation. You may do some- 
thing with the other ; you may pass him ofl" toler- 
ably well ; but your indigent she-relative is hope- 
less. " He is an old humorist," you may say, 
" and afl"ects to go threadbare. His circum- 
stances are better than folks would take them to 
be. You are fond of having a Character at your 
table, and truly he is one. " But in the indications 
of female poverty there can be no disguise. No 
woman dresses below herself from caprice. The 
truth must out without shuffling. " She is plainly 
related to the L s ; or what does she at 



poor 1Relat(on0. 285 

their house ? She is, in all probability, your wife's 
cousin. Nine times out often, at least, this is the 
case. Her garb is something between a gentle- 
woman and a beggar, yet the former evidently pre- 
dominates. She is most provokingly humble, and 
ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He 
may require to be repressed sometimes — uliquando 
sufflaminajidus erat — but there is no raising her. 
You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be 

helped — after the gentlemen. Mr. requests 

the honor of taking wine with her ; she hesitates 
between port and Madeira, and chooses the former 
— because he does. She calls the servant Sir ; 
and insists on not troubling him to hold her 
plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The 
children's governess takes upon her to correct her, 
when she has mistaken the piano for the harpsi- 
chord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable 
instance of the disadvantages to which this 
chimerical notion of affinity cojistituting a claim to 
acquaintance may subject the spirit of a gentle- 
man. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt 
him and a lady with a great estate. His stars 
are prepetually crossed by the malignant mater- 
nity of an old woman, who persists in calling him 
"her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in 
the end to recompense his indignities, and float him 
again upon the brilliant surface under which it 
has been her seeming business and pleasure all 
along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of 
Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life 
who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. 

Poor W was of my own standing at Christ's, 

a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had 



286 JEssaiss of Blia, 

a blemish it was too much pride ; but its quality 
was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort which 
hardens the heart and serves to keep inferiors at 
a distance ; it only sought to ward off derogation 
from itself. It was the principle of self-respect 
carried as far as it could go, without infringing 
upon that respect which he would have every one 
else equally maintain for himself. He would 
have you think alike with him on this topic. 
Many a quarrel have I had with him when we 
were older boys, and our tallness made us more 
obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, 
because I would not thread the alleys and blind 
ways of the town with him to elude notice, when 
we have been out together on a holiday in the 
streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. 

W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, 

where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's 
life, meeting with the alloy of a humble introduc- 
tion, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the 
place, with a profound aversion from the society. 
The servitor's gown (worse than the school array) 
clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought 
himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer 
must have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in 
his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no 
discommendable vanity. In the depth of college 
shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student 
shrunk from observation. He found shelter 
among books, which insult not ; and studies, that 
ask no question of a youth's finances. He was 
lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking 
out beyond his domains. The healing influence 
of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and 
to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when 



Ipoor 1Relation6, 287 

the waywardness of his fate broke out against 
him with a second and worse malignity. The 

father of W had hitherto exercised the humble 

profession of house-painter at N , near Oxford. 

A supposed interest with some of the heads of 
colleges had now induced him to take up his 
abode in that city with the hope of being em- 
ployed upon some public works which were talked 
of. From that moment I read in the countenance 
of the young man the determination which at 
length tore him from academical pursuits forever. 
To a person unacquainted with our universities, 
the distance between the gownsmen and the 
townsmen, as they are called — the trading part of 
the latter especially — is carried to an excess that 
would appear harsh and incredible. The tem- 
perament of W ^^"s father was diametrically the 

reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, 

cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his 
arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in 
hand, to any thing that wore the semblance of a 
gown, insensible to the winks and open remon- 
strances of the young man, to whose chamber- 
fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus 
obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a 

state of things could not last. W must change 

the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the 
former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains 
the point of the filial duties as high as they can 
bear, censure the dereliction, he cannot estimate 
the struggle. I stood with W , the last after- 
noon I ever saw him, under the eves of his pater- 
nal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading 

from the High Street to the back of college, 

where W kept his rooms. He seemed thought- 



2 88 1BS3^^6 of IBM, 

ful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him, 
finding- him in a better mood, upon a representa- 
tion of the Artist Evang-elist, which the old man, 
whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had 
caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame 
over his really handsome shop, either as a token 
of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his saint. 

W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, 

"knew his mounted sign — and fled." A letter on 
his father's table the next morning announced 
that he had accepted a commission in a regiment 
about to embark for Portugal. He was among 
the first who perished before the walls of St. 
Sebastian, 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I 
began with treating half seriously, I should have 
fallen upon a recital so eminently painful. But 
this theme of poor relationship is replete with so 
much matter for tragic as well as comic associa- 
tions, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct 
without blending. The earliest impressions which 
I received on this matter are certainly not attended 
with any thing painful or very humiliating in the 
recalling. At my father s table (no very splendid 
one) was to be found, every Saturday, the myste- 
rious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in deep 
black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His de- 
portment was of the essence of gravity ; his words 
few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in 
his presence. 1 had little inclination to have done 
so, for my cue was to admire in silence. A par- 
ticular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which 
was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of 
sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occa- 
sion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used 



IPoor IRelations. 289 

to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could 
make out of him was, that he and my father had 
been schoolfellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that 
he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be 
a place where all the money was coined, and I 
thought he was the owner of all that money. Aw- 
ful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about 
his presence. He seemed above human infirmi- 
ties and passions. A sort of melancholy grand- 
eur invested him. From some inexplicable doom 
I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal 
suit of mourning ; a captive, a stately being, let 
out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I 
wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in 
spite of an habitual general respect which we 
all in common manifested towards him, would 
venture now and then to stand up against him 
in some argument, touching their youthful days. 
The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divid- 
ed (as most of my readers know) between the 
dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This 
marked distinction formed an obvious division 
between the boys who lived above (however 
brought together in a common school) and the 
boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; 
a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these 
young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading 
Mountaineer ; and would still maintain the general 
superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above 
Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so 
were they called), of which party his contempo- 
rary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the 
skirmishes on this topic, the only one on which 
the old gentleman was ever brought out — and bad 
blood bred ;■ even sometimes almost to the recom- 

19 



290 jB5sa^2Q ot J6lla. 

mencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. 
But my father, who scorned to insist upon advan- 
tages, generally contrived to turn the conversa- 
tion upon some adroit by-commendation of the old 
Minister ; in the general preference for which, 
before all other cathedrals in the island, the dwell- 
er on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on 
a conciliating level, and lay down their less im- 
portant differences. Once only I saw the old 
gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with 
anguish the thought that came over me: "Per- 
haps he will never come here again. " He had been 
pressed to take another plate of the viand which 
I have already mentioned as the indispensable 
concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a 
resistance amounting to rigor — when my aunt, an 
old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in 
common with my cousin Bridget, that she would 
sometimes press civility out of season, — uttered 
the following memorable application: "Do take 
another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pud- 
ding every day. " The old gentleman said nothing 
at the time, — but he took occasion in the course 
of the evening, when some argument had inter- 
vened between them, to utter with an emphasis 
which chilled the company, and which chills me 
now as I write it — "Woman, you are superannu- 
ated ! " John Billet did not survive long, after the 
digesting of this affront ; but he survived long 
enough to assure me that peace was actually re- 
stored ! and, if I remember aright, another pud- 
ding was discreetly substituted in the place of that 
which had occasioned the offence. He died at 
the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, 
what he had accounted a comfortable indepen- 



Ipoor IRelations. 291 

dence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, 
and a penny, which were found in his escritoire 
after his decease, left the world, blessing God that 
he had enough to bury him, and that he had never 
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This 
was a Poor Relation. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 
READING. 



To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with 
the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a 
man of quahty and breeding may be much amused with the 
natural sprouts of his own. — Lord Foppington in the Relapse. 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so 
much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, 
that he has left off reading altogether, to the great 
improvement of his originality. At the hazard of 
losing some credit on this head, I must confess 
that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my 
time to other people's thoughts. I dream away 
my life in others' speculations. I love to lose 
myself in other men's minds. When I am not 
walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. 
Books think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too 
genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I 
can read any thing which I call a hook. There 
are things in that shape which I cannot allow for 
such. 

In this catalogue of books which are no books 
— biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Direct- 
ories, Pocket-Books, Draught-Boards, bound and 
lettered on the back. Scientific Treatises, Alma- 
nacs, Statutes at Large ; the works of Hume, Gib- 
292 



2)etacbeD ZbowQbts on ;©ooft0 anD IReaDing. 293 

bon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, gen- 
erally, all those volumes which ''no gentleman's 
library should be without " ; the Histories of Fla- 
vius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's 
Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can 
read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a 
taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these 
/king's in books clothing perched upon shelves, 
like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intrud- 
ers into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legiti- 
mate occupants. To reach down a well-bound 
semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind- 
hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its 
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Popula- 
tion Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, 
and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged 
assortment of block-headed Encyclopaedias (An- 
glicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of 
russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good 
leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering 
folios ; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and 
enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself 
again in the world. I never see these impostors, 
but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged 
veterans in their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the 
desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes 
after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be 
lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. 
I would not dress a set of Magazines, for in- 
stances, in full suit. The dishabille or half-bind- 
ing (with russia backs ever) is our costume. A 
Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first edi- 
tions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay 



294 iSse^^e ot J8lla. 

apparel. The possession of them confers no dis- 
tmction. The exterior of them (the things them- 
selves being so common), strange to say, raises 
no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property 
in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks 
(best I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared 
How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are 
the sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay 
the very odor (beyond russia), if we would not 
forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old 
** Circulating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of 
Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand 
thumbs that have turned over their pages with 
delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may 
have cheered (milliner, or harder- working man- 
tua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, run- 
ning far into midnight, when she has snatched an 
hour^ ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as 
in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their en- 
chanting contents ! Who would have them a 
whit less soiled ? What better condition could 
we desire to see them in ? 

In some respects the better a book is, the less 
it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett 
Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-pro- 
ductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — 
we see them individually perish with less regret, 
because we know the copies of them to be 
"eterne." But where a book is at once both 
good and rare, where the individual is almost the 
species, and when /ha^ perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
Which can its light relumine, — 

such a book, for instance, as the *'Life of tne 



H)etacbeD Q^bougbts on 3Soo?is auD iReaDing* 295 

Duke of Newcastle/* by his Duchess — no casket 
is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to 
honor and keep safe such a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, 
which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted ; but 
old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, 
Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller 
— of whom we have reprints, yet the books them- 
selves, though they go about, and are talked of 
here and there, we know, have not endenizened 
themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national 
heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to 
possess these indurable and costly covers. I do 
not care for a first folio of Shakespeare. I rather 
prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, 
without notes, and with plates, which, being so 
execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remem- 
brancers, to the text ; and without pretending to 
any supposable emulation with it, are so much 
better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, 
which did. I have a community of feeling with 
my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those 
editions of him best, which have been oftenest 
tumbled about and handled. On the contrary, 
I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in the 
Folio. The octavo editions are painful to look 
at. I have no sympathy with them. If they 
were as much read as the current editions of the 
other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to 
the older one, I do not know a more heartless 
sight than the reprint of the ''Anatomy of Melan- 
choly." What need was there of unearthing the 
bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose 
them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to 
modern censure? what hapless stationer could 



296 Bsaass of Blla* 

dream of Burton ever becoming popular? The 
wretched Malone could not do worse when he 
bribed the sexton of Stratford Church to let him 
whitewash the painted effi.gy of old Shakespeare, 
which stood there, in rude but lively fashion 
depicted, to the very color of the cheek, the eye, 
the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear 
—the only authentic testimony we had, however 
imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of 
him. They covered him over with a coat of 

white paint. By , if I had been a justice of 

the peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapped 
both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, 
for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient 
trouble- tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that 
the names of some poets sound sweeter, and have 
a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than 
that of Milton or of Shakespeare ? It may be that 
the latter are more staled and rung upon in com- 
mon discourse. The sweetest names, and which 
carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Marlowe, 
Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cow- 
ley. 

Much depends upon when and where you read 
a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, 
before the dinner is quite ready, who would think 
of taking up the " Fairy Queen " for a stop-gap, 
or a volume of Bishop Andrewes's sermons ^ 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of 
music to be played before you enter upon him. 
But he brings his music, to which, who listens 
had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with lesa 



BetacbeD ZbowQhie on :©oofts auD IReaDing* 297 

of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At 
such a season, the ** Tempest/' or his own 
** Winter's Tale" 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading 
aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some 
single person listening. More than one — and it 
degenerates into an audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for inci- 
dents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will 
not do to read them out. I could never listen to 
even the better kind of modern novels without 
extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper read out, is intolerable. In some 
of the bank offices it is the custom (to save so 
much individual time) for one of the clerks — who 
is the best scholar — to commence upon the 7Ymes, 
or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents 
aloud, pro bono publico. With every advantage of 
lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. 
In barber's shops and public-houses a fellow will 
get up and spell out a paragraph, which he com- 
municates as some discovery. Another follows 
with his selection. So the entire journal trans- 
pires at length by piecemeal. Seldom-readers 
are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no 
one in the company would probably ever travel 
through the contents of a whole paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one 
ever lays one down without a feeling of disap- 
pointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, 
at Nando 's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hear- 
ing the waiter bawling out incessantly, "The 
Chronicle is in hand, sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered 



298 Bs5ai20 ot Blfa. 

your supper — what can be more delightful than to 
find lying in the window-seat, left there time out 
of mind by the carelessness of some former guest, 
two or three numbers of the old Town and Country 
magazine, with its amusing iete-a-iete pictures, — 

''The Royal Lover and Lady G ," "The 

Melting Platonic and the Old Beau," and such 
like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange 
it — at that time, and in that place — for a better 
book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not 
regret it so much for the weightier kinds of read- 
ing — the ** Paradise Lost," or "Comus," he could 
have read to him — but he missed the pleasure of 
skimming over with his own eye a magazine or 
a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious 
avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading 
"Candide." 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise 
than having been once detected — by a familiar 
damsel — reclined at my ease upon the grass 
on Primrose Hill (her Cythera) reading *' Pamela." 
There was nothing in the book to make a man 
seriously ashamed at the exposure ; but as she 
seated herself down by me, and seemed deter- 
mined to read in company, I could have wished 
it had been — any other book. We read on very 
sociably for a few pages, and not finding the 
author much to her taste, she got up and went — 
away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to con- 
jecture whether the blush (for there was one be- 
tween us) was the property of the nymph or the 
swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never 
get the secret. 



2)etacbe& ^bougbts on Books anD tReaOing. 299 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. 
I can not settle my spirits to it. I knew a Uni- 
tarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon 
Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street was not), be- 
tween the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, 
studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to 
have been a strain of abstraction beyond my 
reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, 
keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate 
encounter with a porter's knot or a bread-basket 
would have quickly put to flight all the theology 
I am master of, and have left me worse than 
indifferent to the five points. 

There is a class of street-readers whom I can 
never contemplate without affection — the poor 
gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire 
a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls — 
the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious 
looks at them all the while, and thinking when 
they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page 
after page, expecting every moment when he shall 
interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny 
themselves the gratification, they ''snatch a fear- 
ful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily 

fragments, got through two volumes of ' ' Clarissa, " 
when the stall-keeper damped his laudible ambi- 
tion by asking him (it was in his younger days) 

w^hether he meant to purchase the work. M 

declares that under no circumstance in his life did 
he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction 
which he took in those uneasy snatches. A 
quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon 
this subject in two very touching but homely 
stanzas : 



300 iBesti^B of J6lia. ; 

I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 

And read, as he'd devour it all : 

Which when the stall-man did espy, 

Soon to the boy I heard him call : 

" You, sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look." 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read, 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy : 

I soon perceived another boy. 

Who looked as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least, — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had leam'd to eat. 



STAGE ILLUSION. 



^ A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in propor- 
tion to the scenical illusion produced. Whether 
such illusion can in any case be perfect, is not 
the question. The nearest approach to it, we are 
told, is when the actor appears wholly uncon- 
scious of the presence of spectators. In tragedy 
—-in all which is to affect the feelings — this undi- 
vided attention to his stage business seems indis- 
pensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every 
day by our cleverest tragedians, and while these 
references to an audience, in the shape of rant or 
sentiment are not too frequent or palpable, a suf- 
ficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of 
dramatic interest may be said to be produced in 
spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be 
inquired whether in certain characters in comedy, 
especially those which are a little extravagant, or 
which involve some notion repugnant to the 
moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill 
in the comedian when, without absolutely appeal- 
ing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit under- 
standing with them, and makes them, uncon- 
sciously to themselves, a party in the scene. The 
utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing 
this ; but we speak only of the great artists in the 
profession. 

301 



302 35603^5 Of Blia. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, 
to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, 
is perhaps cowardice. To see a coward done to 
the life upon a stage would produce any thing but 
mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Ban- 
nister's cowards. Could any thing be more 
agreeable, more pleasant.? We loved the rogues. 
How was this effected but by the exquisite art of 
the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the 
spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking 
fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took, 
him for .? We saw all the common symptoms of 
the malady upon him ; the quivering lip, the 
cowering knees, the teeth chattering — and could 
have sworn that man was frightened. But we 
forgot all the while — or kept it almost a secret to 
ourselves — that he never once lost his self-posses- 
sion ; that he let out by a thousand droll looks 
and gestures — meant at us, and not at all sup- 
posed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, 
that his confidence in his own resources had 
never once deserted him. Was this a genuine 
picture of a coward.? or not rather a likeness, 
which the clever artist contrived to palm upon us 
instead of an original, while we secretly connived 
at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure 
than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbe- 
cility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which 
we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real 
life, could have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so 
endurable on the stage, but because the skilful 
actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct 
appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal 
of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our com* 



stage f llu6fon. 303 

passion for the insecure tenure by which he holds 
his money-bags and parchments ? By this subtle 
vent half of the hatefulness of the character — the 
self-closeness with which in real life it coils itself 
up from the sympathies of men — evaporates. The 
miser becomes sympathetic; /. e., is no genuine 
miser. Here again a diverting likeness is sub- 
stituted for a very disagreeable reality. 

Spleen, irritability^ — the pitiable infirmities of 
old men, which produce only pain to behold in 
the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert 
not altogether for the comic appendages to them, 
but in part from an inner conviction that they are 
being acted before us ; that a likeness only is going 
on, and not the thing itself. They please by being 
done under the life, or beside it ; not h the life. 
When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? 
or only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a 
likeness to recognize, without pressing upon us 
the uneasy sense of a reality .? 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may 
be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. 
Nothing could be more earnest or true than the 
manner of Mr. Emery ; this told excellently in 
his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But 
when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of 
attention to the stage business, and wilful blind- 
ness and oblivion of every thing before the curtain 
into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant 
effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the 
PersoncB Dramatis. There was as little link be- 
tween him and them, as betwixt himself and the 
audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, 
and unsocial to all. Individually considered, his 
execution was masterly. But comedy is not this 



304 K65ai26 ot }6lla, 

unbending thing ; for this reason, that the same de- 
gree of credibility is not required of it as to serious 
scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to 
the two things, may be illustrated by the dif- 
ferent sort of truth which we expect when a man 
tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we sus- 
pect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we 
reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a 
suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful 
tale has latitude allowed him. We are content 
with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with 
dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy 
to see an audience natu ralize d behind the scenes, 
taken into the interest of the drama, welcomed as 
bystanders however. There is something un- 
gracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof 
from all participation or concern with those who 
are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must 
see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of 
it ; but an old fool in farce may think he sees some- 
thing, and by conscious words and looks express 
it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and 
gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an 
Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious 
passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt 
with which he is treated. But when the pleasant 
impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant 
to give delight, and raise mirth out of whimsical 
perplexities, worries the studious man with taking 
up his leisure, or making his house his home, the 
same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) 
would destroy the balance of delight in the spec- 
tators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor 
who plays the annoyed man must a little desert 
nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the 



stage HHusion. 305 

audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction 
and peevishness as is consistent with the^easure 
of comedy. In other words, his perplexity must 
seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with 
the sober set face of a man in earnest, and more 
especially if he deliver his expostulations in atone 
which in the world must n ecessaril y provoke a 
duel ; his real-life manner will destroy the whim- 
sical and purely dramatic existence of the other 
character (which to render it comic demands an 
antagonist comicality on the part of the character 
opposed to it), ^n3~convert what was meant for 
mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece 
of impertinence indeed, which would raise no di- 
version in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted 
in earnest upon any unworthy person. A very 
judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have 
fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with 
Mr. Wrench in the farce of " Free and Easy." 

Many instances would be tedious ; these may 
suffice to show that comic acting at least does not 
always demand from the performer that strict 
abstraction from all reference to an audience 
which is exacted of it ; but that in some cases a 
sort of cornp^romise may take place, and all the 
purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a 
judicious understanding, not too openly an- 
nounced, between the ladies and gentlemen — on 
both sides of the curtain. 



20 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 



JoYousEST of once embodied spirits, whither at 
length hast thou flown ? to what genial region are 
we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted? 

Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest 
time was still to come with thee) upon casual 
sands of Avernus? or art thou enacting Rover (as 
we would gladlier think) by wandering Elysian 
streams ? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy 
brief antics amongst us, was in truth any thing 
but a prison to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams 
of this body to be no better than a county jail, 
forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof 
the five senses are the fetters. Thou knew est 
better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves 
and had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert 
quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty 
Devices ; thy Louvre, or thy White Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou 
tenant now ? or when may we expect thy aerial 
house-warming } 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the 
Blessed Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy 
thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as 
306 



^0 tt)e SbaDe ot BlHston. 



307 



the schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for 
Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) there may- 
exist — not far perchance from that storehouse of 
all vanities, which Milton saw in vision — a Limbo 
somewhere for Players ? and that 

Up thither like aerial vapors fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 

Abortive, monstrous or unkindly mixed, 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. 

There, by the neighboring moon (by some not. 
improperly supposed thy Regent Planet upon 
earth) mayst thou not still be acting thy man- 
agerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee ? but 
Lessee still, and still a manager. 

In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the 
muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on 
earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still their song 
is Fie on sinful Fantasy ! 

Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe 
of earth, Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we 
know not thy new name in heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, 
thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in 
crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old 
boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with 
raucid voice, bawling ' ' Sculls, Sculls ! " to which, 
with waving hand, and majestic action, thou 
deignest no reply, other than in two curt mono- 
syllables : ''No: Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small 



3oS B66ai?6 ot Blfa. 

difference between king- and cobbler ; manager 
and call-boy ; and, if haply your dates of life 
were conterminant, you are quietly taking your 
passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble leveling- of 
Death !) with the shade of some recently departed 
candle-snuffer. 

But mercy ; what strippings, what tearing off 
of histrionic robes and private vanities ; what 
denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferry- 
man will admit you to set a foot within his bat- 
tered lighter ! 

Crowns, sceptres, shield, sword, and truncheon, 
thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought 
the whole property-man's wardrobe Avith thee, 
enough to sink a navy), the judge's ermine, the 
coxcomb's wig, the snuff-box a laFoppingion, — all 
must overboard, he positively swears ; and that 
Ancient Mariner brooks no denial ; for, since 
the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian 
Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown 
small taste for theatricals. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight ; 
pura et puta aniina. 

But, bless you, how little you look ! 

So shall we all look — kings and keysars — 
stripped for the last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleas- 
ant, and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting 
thanks for many a heavy hour of life lightened 
by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or domes- 
tic. 

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes 
below, leaving to his two brothers the heavy 
calendars, — honest Rhadamanth, always partial 
to players, weighing their parti-colored existence 



Zo tbe Sbat)c ot JSlliston. 309 

here upon earth, — making account of the few 
foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as we 
call it (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapor 
than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of 
Drury), as but of so many echoes, natural reper- 
cussions, and results to be expected from the as- 
sumed extravagances of thy secondary or mock 
life, nightly upon a stage — after a lenient castiga- 
tion, with rods lighter than of those Medusean 
ringlets, but just enough to '' whip the offending 
Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee 
at the right-hand gate — the O. P. side of Hades 
— that conducts to masks and merry-makings in 
the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 



ELLISTONIANA. 



My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, 
whose loss we all deplore, was but slight. My 

first introduction to E , which afterwards 

ripened into an acquaintance a little on this side of 
intimacy, was over a counter in the Leamington 
Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch 

of his family. E , v/hom nothing misbecame 

— to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and 
set it a-going with a lustre, — was serving in 
person two damsels fair, who had come into the 
shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publica- 
tion, but in reality to have a sight of the illus- 
trious shopman, hoping some conference. With 
what an air did he reach down the volume, dis- 
passionately giving his opinion of the worth of 
the work in question, and launching out into a 
dissertation on its comparative merits with those 
of certain publications of a similar stamp, its 
rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly hanging 
on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sen- 
tence. So have I seen a gentleman in comedy, 
acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves 
in King Street. I admired the histrionic art by 
which he contrived to carry clean away every 
notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so 
generously submitted to ; and from that hour I 
310 



Bllietontana. 3n 

judged him, with no after-repentance, to be a 
person with whom it would be a felicity to be 
more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a comedian 
would be superfluous. With his blended pri- 
vate and professional habits alone I have to do ; 
that harmonious fusion of the manners of the 
player into those of every-day life, which brought 
the stage boards into streets and dining-parlors, 
and kept up the play when the play was ended. 
"I like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one 
day, "because he is the same natural, easy crea- 
ture 071 the stage that he is off." "My case ex- 
actly," retorted EUiston, — with a charming forget- 
fulness that the converse of a proposition does 
not always lead to the same conclusion, — " I am 
the same person <?^ the stage that I am onJ' The 
inference, at first sight, seems identical ; but ex- 
amine it a little and it confesses only that the 
one performer was never, and the other always, 
acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of EUiston's 
private deportment. You had spirited perform- 
ance always going on before your eyes, with 
nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes up 
his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel 
which he honors by sleeping in it, becomes ipso 
facto for that time a palace ; so wherever Elliston 
v/alked, sat, or stood still, there was his theatre. 
He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and 
galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at 
corners of streets, and in the market-places. 
Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still ; 
and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the 
green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously 



312 E00ai29 of JBlia* 

rose beneath his feet. . Now this was hearty, and 
showed a love for his art. So Apelles always 
painted — in thought. So G. D. always poetizes. 
I hate a lukewarm artist I have known actors — 
and some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who 
shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part 
of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three 
hours of their dramatic existence ; but no sooner 
does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter but a 
spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. 
They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable 
to their families, servants, etc. Another shall have 
been expanding your heart with generous deeds 
and sentiments, till it even beats with yearnings of 
universal sympathy ; you absolutely long to go 
home and do some good action. The play seems 
tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house 
and realize your laudable intentions. At length 
the final bell rings, and this cordial representative 
of all that is amiable in human breasts steps forth 
— a miser. EUiston was more of a piece. Did 
he p/ay Ranger ? and did Ranger fill the general 
bosom of the town with satisfaction ? why should 
he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial 
satisfaction among his private circles ? with his 
temperament, his animal spirits, his good nature, 
his follies perchance, could he do better than 
identify himself with his impersonations ? Are 
we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the 
stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the 
identical character presented to us in actual life.? 
or what would the performer have gained by 
divesting himself of the impersonation ? Could 
the man EUiston .have been essentially different 
from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect 



}6Ui0toniana. 313 

to us studiously, in private circles, the airy brisk- 
ness, the forwardness, and scapegoat trickeries 
of his prototype ? 

' ' But there is something not natural in this ever- 
lasting acting ; we want the real man." 

Are you quite sure it is not the man himself, 
whom you cannot, or will not see, under some 
adventitious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not 
at all inconsistently upon him? What if it is the 
nature of some men to be highly artificial ? The 
fault is least reprehensible in players. Gibber was 
his own Foppington, with almost as much wit as 
Vanbrugh could add to it. 

" My conceit of his person " — it is Ben Jonson 
speaking of Lord Bacon — "was never increased 
towards him by his place or honors. But I have, 
and do reverence him for the greatness that was 
only proper to himself ; in that he seemed to me 
ever one of ihegreatest men that had been in many 
ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven 
would give him strength ; for greatness he could 
not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less 
conspicuous in the subject of these idle reminis- 
cences than in My Lord Verulam. Those who 
have imagined that an unexpected elevation to 
the direction of a great London theatre affected 
the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his 
nature, knew not the essential greatness of the 
man whom they disparage. It was my fortune 
to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church 
(which, with its punctual giants, is now no more 
than dust and a shadow) on the morning of his 
election to that high office. Grasping my hand 
v/ith a look of significance, he only uttered: 



314 iBbbsi>qb of Blfa. 

" Have you heard the news ? " — then, with another 
look following up the blow, he subjoined, " I am 
the future manager of Drury Lane Theatre." 
Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for con- 
gratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, 
leaving me to chew upon his new-blown dignities 
at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. 
Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. 
This was his grea^ style. 

But was he less grea/ (be witness, O ye powers 
of equanimity, that supported in the ruins of 
Carthage the consular exile, and more recently 
transmuted, for a more illustrious exile, the 
barren constableship of Elba into an image of 
imperial France !) when, in melancholy after- 
years again, much near the same spot, I met 
him, when that sceptre had been wrested 
from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to 
the petty managership and part proprietorship, of 
the small Olympic, his Elba ? He still played 
nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, 
alas ! allotted to him, not magnificently distrib- 
uted by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, 
and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen 
material grandeur in the more liberal resentment 
of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual 
pretensions, ** Have you heard" (his customary 
exordium) — 'Miave you heard," said he, "how 
they treat me ? they put me in comedy." 
Thought I — but his finger on his lips forbade any 
verbal interruption — " where could they have put 
you better." Then, after a pause — ''Where I 
formerly played Romeo I now play Mercutio," — 
and so again he stalked away, neither staying 
nor caring for response. 



jSlUstontana. 3 1 5 

Oh, it was a rich scene ; but Sir A C- 



the best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends 
a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fract- 
ure, alone could do justice to it — that I was a 
witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once 
been green) of that same little Olympic. There, 
after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he sub- 
stituted a throne. That Olympic Hill w^as his 
"highest heaven " ; himself "Jove in his chair." 
There he sat in state, while before him, on com- 
plaint of prompter, was brought for judgment — 
how shall I describe her.? — one of those little 
tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses — 
a probationer for the town, in either of its senses 
— the pertest little drab — a dirty fringe and 
appendage of the lamp's smoke, who, it seems, 
on some disapprobation expressed by a "highly 
respectable " audience — had precipitately quitted 
her station on the boards, and withdrawn her 
small talents in disgust. 

"And how dare you,'' said her manager, as- 
suming a censorial severity which would have 
crushed the confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed 
that beautiful Rebel herself of her professional 
caprices — I verily believe he thought her standing 
before him — "how dare you. Madam, withdraw 
yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical 
duties?" "I was hissed, sir." "And you have 
the presumption to decide upon the taste of the 
town }" "I don't know, sir, but I will never 
stand to be hissed," was the subjoiner of young 
Confidence ; when, gathering up his features into 
one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expos- 
tulatory indignation, in a lesson never to have 
been lost upon a creature less forward than she 



3i6 3Es6a^0 of IBM. 

who stood before him, — his words were these : 
" they have hissed me." 

'Twas the identical argument a fortiori which 
the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under 
his lance to persuade him to take his destiny 
\vith grace. " I too am mortal." And it is to be 
believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed of 
its application, for want of a proper understanding 
with the faculties of the respective recipients. 

"Quite an opera pit," he said to me, as he was 
courteously conducting me over the benches of 
his Surrey Theatre, the last retreat and recess of 
his every-day waning grandeur. 

Those who knew Elliston w^ill know the man- 
ner in which he pronounced the latter sentence 
of the few words I am about to record. One 
proud day to me he took his roast mutton with 
us in the Temple, to which I had superadded a 
preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful 
partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed 
with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of 
apology for the humility of the fare, observing 
that for my own part I never ate but one dish for 
dinner. *' I, too, never eat but one thing at din- 
ner," was his reply ; then, after a pause, " reckon- 
ing fish as nothing." The manner was all. It 
was as if by one peremptory sentence he had 
decreed the annihilation of all the savory escu- 
lents which the pleasant and nutritious food-giving 
ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her 
watery bosom. This wdiS greatness tempered with 
considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty 
but welcoming entertainer. 

Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Ellis- 
ton ! and not lessened in thy death, if report 



j&lUetoniana. 



3^1 



speak truly, which says that thou didst direct that 
thy immortal remains should repose under no 
inscription but one of pure Laiinity. Classical 
was thy bringing up ! and beautiful was the feel- 
ing on thy last bed, which, connecting the man 
with the boy, took thee back to thy latest exercise 
of imagination to the days when, undreaming of 
Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, 
and an early ripe one, under the roofs builded 
by the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the 
Pauline Muses weep. In elegies that shall 
silence this crude prose, they shall celebrate thy 
praise. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 



I AM fond of passing my vacation (I believe I 
have said so before) at one or other of the Uni- 
versities. Next to these my choice would fix me 
at some woody spot, such as the neighborhood of 
Henley affords in abundance on the banks of my 
beloved Thames. But somehow or other my 
cousin contrives to wheedle me, once in three or 
four seasons, to a watering-place. Old attach- 
ments cling to her in spite of experience. We 
have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller 
at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, 
and are at this moment doing dreary penance at 
— Hastings ! and all because we were happy 
many years ago for a brief week at Margate. 
That was our first seaside experiment, and many 
circumstances combine to make it the most 
agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of 
us seen the sea, and we had never been from 
home so long together in company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with 
thy weather-beaten, sunburnt captain, and his 
rough accommodations, ill exchanged for the fop- 
pery and freshwater niceness of the modern steam- 
packet ? To the winds and waves thou commit- 
test thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of 
magic fumes, and spells, and boiling caldrons. 
With the gales of heaven thou wentest swim- 

318 



Zbc s^lO /iBaraate Ibos. 319 

mingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest 
still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was 
natural, not forced as in a hot-bed ; nor didst 
thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sul- 
phurous smoke, a great sea chimera, chimneying 
and furnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god 
parching up Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with 
their coy, reluctant responses (yet to the suppres- 
sion of anything Hke contempt) to the raw ques- 
tions, which we of the great city would be ever 
and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this 
or that strange naval implement ? 'Specially can 
I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of 
refuge between us and them, conciliating inter- 
preter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable 
ambassador between sea and land ! — whose sailor- 
trousers did not more convincingly assure thee to 
be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy 
white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy 
neat-figured practice in thy culinary vocation, 
bespoke thee to have been of inland nurture here- 
tofore, — a master cook of Eastcheap ? How busily 
didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation — cook, 
mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, there, like 
another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of 
the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations, — not to 
assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kin- 
dred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms 
which that untried motion might haply raise in 
our crude land-fancies. And when the o'erwash- 
ing billows drove us below deck (for it was far 
gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing 
weather), how did thy officious ministerings, 
still catering for our comfort, with cards, and 



320 3E65ai5S ot Elia. 

cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, 
alleviate the closeness and the confinement of 
thy else (truth to say) not very savory, nor very 
inviting, little cabin. 

With these additaments to boot, we had on 
board a fellow-passenger, whose discourses in 
verity might have beguiled a longer voyage 
than we meditated, and have made mirth and 
wonder abound as far as the Azores. He was 
a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, re- 
markably handsome, with an officer-like assur- 
ance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. 
He was, in fact, the greatest liar I have met with 
then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, 
half story-tellers (a most painful description 
of mortals) who go on sounding your behef, 
and only giving you as much as they see 
you can swallow at a time — the nibbling pick- 
pockets of your patience, — but one who com- 
mitted downright, daylight depredations upon 
his neighbor's faith. He did not stand shivering 
upon the brink, but was a hearty, thorough- 
paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths 
of your credulity. I partly believe, he made 
pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, 
not many wise, or learned, composed at that 
time the common stowage of a Margate packet. 
We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned 
Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) 
as Aldermanbury, or Watling Street, at that 
time of day, could have supplied. There might 
be an exception or two among us, but I scorn to 
make any invidious distinctions among such a 
jolly, companionable ship's company as those 
were whom I sailed with. Some thing too must 



Ubc ©ID Margate 1bos. 321 

be conceded to the genius loci. Had the confi- 
dent fellow told us half the legends on land, 
which he had favored us with on the other ele- 
ment, I flatter myself the good sense of most 
of us would have revolted. But we were in a 
new world, with every thing unfamiliar about 
us, and the time and place disposed us to the 
reception of any prodigious marvel w^hatsoever. 
Time has obliterated from my memory much of 
his wild fablings ; and the rest would appear 
but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. 
He had been aide-de-camp (among other rare 
accidents and fortunes) to a Persian prince, and 
at one blow had stricken off the head of the 
King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, 
married the prince's daughter. I forget what 
unlucky turn in the politics of that court, com- 
bining with the loss of his consort, was the 
reason of his quitting Persia ; but, with the 
rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, 
along with his hearers, back to England, where 
we still found him in the confidence of great 
ladies. There was some story of a princess — • 
Elizabeth, if I remember — having intrusted to his 
care an extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some 
extraordinary occasion — but, as I am not certain 
of the name or circumstance at this distance of 
time, I must leave it to the royal daughters of 
England to settle the honor among themselves in 
private. I cannot call to mind half his pleasant 
wonders ; but I perfectly remember, that in the 
course of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; 
and he obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar 
error, that there is but one of that, species at 
a time, assuring us that they were not un- 
21 



322 jessa^s ot Blia. 

common in some parts of Upper Egypt. Hither- 
to he had found the most implicit listeners. 
His dreaming fancies had transported us be- 
yond the " ignorant present." But when (still 
hardying more and more in his triumphs over 
our simplicity) he went on to affirm that he 
had actually sailed through the legs of the Col- 
ossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to 
make a stand. And here I must do justice to the 
good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a 
youth, that had hitherto been one of his most 
deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, 
made bold to assure the gentleman that there 
must be some mistake, as " the Colossus in ques- 
tion had been destroyed long since " ; to whose 
opinion, delivered with all m.odesty, our hero was 
obliging enough to concede thus much, that ''the 
figure was indeed a little damaged." This was 
the only opposition he met w^ith, and it did not at 
all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with 
his fables, which the same youth appeared to 
swallow with more complacency than ever, — 
confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candor 
of that concession. With these prodigies he 
wheedled us on till we came in sight of Reculvers, 
which one of our own company (having been the 
voyage before) immediately recognizing, and 
pointing out to us, was considered by us as no 
ordinary seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck 
quite a different character. It was a lad appar- 
ently very poor, very infirm, and very patient. 
His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile ; and 
if he caught now and then some snatches of 
these wild legends, it was by accident, and they 



ZTbe ©ID flSarsate fbo^* 323 

seemed not to concern him. The waves to him 
whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, 
being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell 
of dinner ring without stirring ; and when some 
of us pulled out our private stores, our cold meat ^ 
and our salads, — he produced none and seemed 
to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had 
laid in ; provision for the one or two days and 
nights, to which these vessels then were often- 
times obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a 
nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed 
neither to court nor decline, we learned that he 
was going to Margate, with the hope of being 
admitted into the infirmary there for sea-bathing. 
His disease was a scrofula, which appeared to 
have eaten all over him. He expressed great 
hopes of a cure, and when we asked him whether 
he had any friends where he was going, he re- 
plied, *'he had no friends." 

These pleasant and some mournful passages 
with the first sight of the sea, co-operating with 
youth, and a sense of holidays, and out-of-door ad- 
venture, to me that had been pent up in populous 
cities for many months before, — have left upon 
my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone 
by, bequeathing nothing but their remembrance 
for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare 
some unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavor to 
account for the dissatisfacHon which I have heard 
so many persons confess to have felt (as I did 
myself feel in part on this occasion) at the sight of 
the sea for the first time ? I think the reason 
usually given — referring to the incapacity of act- 
ual objects for satisfying our preconceptions of 



324 J£60a^6 ot jeila. 

them — scarcely goes deep enough into the qiies* 
tion. Let the same person see a lion, an ele- 
phant, a mountain, for the first time in his life, 
and he shall perhaps feel himself a little morti- 
fied. The things do not fill up that space, which 
the idea of them seemed to take up in his mind. 
But they have still a correspondency to his first 
notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to pro- 
duce a very similar impression ; enlarging them- 
selves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But 
the sea remains a disappointment. Is it not, that 
in the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, 
I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of imagina- 
tion, unavoidably) not a definite object, as those 
wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by 
the eye, but all the sea at once, the commensurate 

ANTAGONIST OF THE EARTH ? I dO UOt Say WC tcll 

ourselves so much, but the craving of the mind 
is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will sup- 
pose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I 
then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but from 
description. He comes to it for the first time, — 
•all that he has been reading of it all his life, and 
that the most enthusiastic part of life, — all he has 
gathered from narratives of wandering seamen, — 
what he has gained from true voyages, and what 
he cherishes as credulously from romance and 
poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting 
strange tributes from expectation. He thinks of 
the great deep, and of those who go down unto 
it ; of its thousand isles, and of the vast conti- 
nents it washes ; of its receiving the mighty Plate, 
or Orellana, into its bosom, without disturbance, 
or sense of augmentation ; of Biscay swells and 
the mariner, 



Z\>c ©ID Margate 1bo>s* 325 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, dnd the '* still-vexed Bermoothes "; 
of great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of 
sunken ships, and sunless treasures swallowed up 
in the unrestoring depths ; of fishes and quaint 
monsters, to which all that is terrible on earth 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, 
and shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles; 
of mermaids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects 
to be shown all these wonders at once, but he is 
under the tyranny of a mighty faculty, which 
haunts him with confused hints and shadows of all 
these ; and when the actual object opens first unto 
him, seen (in tame weather too, most likely) from 
our unromantic coasts, — a speck, a slip of sea- 
water, as it shows to him, — what can it prove but 
a very unsatisfying and even diminutive entertain- 
ment ? Or if he has come to it from the mouth of 
a river, was it much more than the river widening ? 
and, even out of sight of land, what had he but a 
flat watery horizon about him, nothing comparable 
to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar object, 
seen daily without dread or amazement? Who, 
in similar circumstances, has not been tempted 
to exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir : 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this a// ? 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable 



326 Bssaiss ot Blia. 

Cinque Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed 
shoots, thrusting out their starved foliage from 
between the horrid fissures of dusty innutritious 
rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure to the 
edge of the sea." I require woods, and they 
show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the 
water-brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and 
inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the 
naked beach, watching the capricious hues of 
the sea, shifting like the colors of a dying mullet. 
I am tired of looking out at the windows of this 
island-prison. I would fain retire into the inte- 
rior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I 
want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me 
in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are 
abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. 
There is no home for me here. There is no sense 
of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive 
resort, a heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews 
and stock-brokers. Amphitrites of the town, and 
misses that coquet with the ocean. If it were 
what it was in its primitive shape, and what it 
ought to have remained, a fair, honest fishing- 
town, and no more, it was something ; — with a 
few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about, 
artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched 
from them, it was something. I could abide to 
dwell with Meshech ; to assort with fisherswains, 
and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, 
many of this latter occupation here. Their faces 
become the place. I like a smuggler. He is the 
only honest thief. He robs nothing but the rev- 
enue, — an abstraction I never greatly cared about. 
I could go out with them in their mackerel boats, 
or about their less ostensible business, with some 



Cbc,®l& /iBargate 1&oi2, 327 

satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor 
victims to monotony, who from day to day pace 
along- the beach, in endless progress and recur- 
rence, to watch their illicit countrymen, townsfolk 
or brethren perchance, — whistling to the sheathing 
and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only 
solace), who, under the mild name of preventive 
service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the 
deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their 
detestation of run hoUands, and zeal for Old Eng- 
land. But it is the visitants from town, that come 
here to say that they have been here, with no 
more relish of the sea than a pond perch or a dace 
might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. 
I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have 
as little toleration for myself here as for them. 
What can they want here .? if they had a true rel- 
ish of the ocean, why have they brought all this 
land luggage with them ? or why pitch their civil- 
ized tents in the desert ? What mean these scanty 
book- rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them 
• — if the sea were, as they would have us believe, 
a book ''to read strange matter in?" what are 
their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they 
would fain be thought to do, to listen to the music 
of the waves ? All is false and hollow pretension. 
They come, because it is the fashion, and to spoil 
the nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I 
have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the 
better sort of them,— now and then, an honest 
citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of his 
heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, 
to taste the sea breezes. I always know the date 
of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their counte- 
nance. A day or two they go wandering on the 



328 B06as0 of ;6lia. 

shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and thinking 
them great things ; but, in a poor week, imagina- 
tion slackens ; they begin to discover that cockles 
produce no pearls, and then — O then ! — if I could 
interpret for the pretty creatures (I know they 
have not the courage to confess it themselves), 
how gladly would they exchange their seaside 
rambles for a Sunday-walk on the greensward of 
their accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emi- 
grants, who think they truly love the sea, with its 
wild usages, what would their feelings be, if some 
of the unsophisticated aborigines of this place, 
encouraged by their courteous questionings here, 
should venture on the faith of such assured sym- 
pathy between them, to return the visit, and come 
up to see — London. I must imagine them with 
their fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry 
our town necessaries. What a sensation would 
it cause in Lothbury. What vehement laughter 
would it not excite among 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street I 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born 
subjects can feel their true and natural nourish- 
ment at these sea-places. Nature, where she 
does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, 
bids us stay at home. The salt foam seems to 
nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured 
as by the milder waters of my natural river. I 
would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and 
scud a swallow forever about the banks of 
Thamesis. 



THE CONVALESCENT. 



A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under 
the name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner 
of me for some weeks past, and is but slowly 
leaving me, has reduced me to an incapacity of 
reflecting upon any topic foreign to itself. Ex- 
pect no healthy conclusions from me this month, 
reader ; I can offer you only sick men's dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; 
for what else is it but a magnificent dream for 
a man to lie a-bed, and draw daylight curtains 
about him ; and, shutting out the sun, to induce 
a total oblivion of all the works which are going 
on under it.? To become insensible to all the 
operations of life, except the beatings of one 
feeble pulse ? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. 
How the patient lords it there ; what caprices he 
acts without control ! how king-like he sways his 
pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and 
lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and mould- 
ing it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his throb- 
bing temples. 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. 
Now he lies full length, then half length, obliquely, 
transversely, head and feet quite across the bed ; 
and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within 

329 



330 IBsea^e of iBlia. 

the four curtains he is absolute. They are his 
Mare Clausum. 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a 
man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive 
object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon 
him as his only duty. 'T is the Two Tables of 
the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but 
how to get well. What passes out of doors, or 
within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, 
affects him not. 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in 
the event of a lawsuit, which was to be the mak- 
ing or the marring of his dearest friend. He was 
to be seen trudging about upon this man's errand 
to fifty quarters of the town at once, jogging this 
witness, refreshing that solicitor. The cause was 
to come on yesterday. He is absolutely as indif- 
ferent to the decision, as if it were a question to 
be tried at Pekin. Peradventure from some 
whispering going on about the house, not in- 
tended for his hearing, he picks up enough to 
make him understand, that things went cross- 
grained in the Court yesterday, and his friend is 
ruined. But the word "friend," and the word 
"ruin," disturbed him no more than so much 
jargon. He is not to think of any thing but how 
to get better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in 
that absorbing consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he 
is wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he 
keeps his sympathy, like some curious vintage, 
under trusty lock and key, for his own use 
only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to 



Zbc Convalescent. 331 

himself; he yearneth over himself; his bowels 
are even melted within him, to think what he 
suffers ; he is not ashamed to weep over himself. 

He is forever plotting how to do some good to 
himself ; studying little stratagems and artificial 
alleviations. 

He makes the most of himself; dividing him- 
self, by an allowable fiction, into as many dis- 
tinct individuals, as he hath sore and sorrowing 
members. Sometimes he meditates — as of a 
thing apart from him — upon his poor aching head, 
and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay 
in it all the past night like a log, or palpable sub- 
stance of pain, not to be removed without open- 
ing the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. 
Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. 
He compassionates himself all over ; and his bed 
is a very discipline of humanity, and tender 
heart. 

He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively 
feels that none can so well perform that office for 
him. He cares for few spectators to his tragedy. 
Only that punctual face of the old nurse pleases 
him, that announces his broths and his cordials. 
He likes it because it is so unmoved, and because 
he can pour forth his feverish ejaculations before 
it as unreservedly as to his bedpost. 

To the world's business he is dead. He under- 
stands not what the callings and occupations of 
mortals are, only he has a glimmering conceit of 
some such thing, when the doctor makes his daily 
call : and even in the lines on that busy face he 
reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely con- 
ceives of himself as /he sick man. To what other 
uneasy couch the good man is hastening, when 



332 B50as5 of JBlin* 

he slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin 
douceur so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no 
speculation which he can at present entertain. 
He thinks only of the regular return of the same 
phenomenon at the same hour to-morrow. 

Household rumors touch him not. Some faint 
murmur, indicative of life going on within the 
house, soothes him, while he knows not distinctly 
what it is. He is not to know any thing, not to 
think of any thing. Servants gliding up or down 
the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet, 
gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles 
not himself further than with some feeble guess 
at their errands. Exacter knowledge would be a 
burden to him ; he can just endure the pressure 
of conjecture. He opens his eye faintly at the 
dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes it 
again without asking ''Who was it?" He is 
flattered by a general notion that inquiries are 
making after him, but he cares not to know the 
name of the inquirer. In the general stillness, 
and awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and 
feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchial prerogatives. 
Compare the silent tread, and quiet ministry, 
almost by the eye only, with which he is served 
— with the careless demeanor, the unceremonious 
goings in and out (slapping of doors, or leaving 
them open) of the very same attendants, when 
he is getting a little better — and you will confess, 
that from the bed of sickness (throne let me 
rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, 
is a fall from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his 
pristine stature ! where is now the space which 



Xlbe Convalescent. 333 

he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's 
eye? 

The scene of his regalities, his sick-room, 
which was his presence chamber, where he lay and 
acted his despotic fancies — how is it reduced to 
a common bed-room ! The trimness of the very 
bed has something petty and unmeaning about 
it. It is made every day. How unlike to that 
wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it 
presented so short a time since, when to make 
it was a service not to be thought of at often er 
than three or four day revolutions, when the 
patient was with pain and grief to be lifted for a 
little while out of it, to submit to the encroach- 
ments of unwelcome neatness, and decencies 
which his shaken frame deprecated; then to be 
lifted into it again, for another three or four days' 
respite, to flounder it out of shape again, while 
every fresh furrow was an historical record of 
some shifting posture, some uneasy turning, some 
seeking for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin 
scarce told a truer story than the crumpled cover- 
lid. 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those 
groans — so much more awful, while we knew not 
from what caverns of vast hidden suffering they 
proceeded. The Lernean pangs are quenched. 
The riddle of sickness is solved; and Philoctetes 
is become an ordinary personage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of 
greatness survives in the still lingering visitations 
of the medical attendant. But how is he, too, 
changed with every thing else ! Can this be he 
— this man of news — of chat — of anecdote — of 
every thing but physic, — can this be he, who so 
lately came between the patient and his cruel 



334 :E05ai26 ot BUa. 

enemy, as on some solemn embassy from Nature, 
erecting herself into a high mediating party ? — 
Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pom- 
pous — the spell that hushed the household — the 
desert-like stillness, felt throughout its inmost 
chambers — the mute attendants — the inquiry by 
looks — the still softer delicacies of self-attention 
— the sole and single eye of distemper alonely 
fixed upon itself — world thoughts excluded — the 
man a world unto himself — his own theatre, — 

What a speck is he dwindled into ! 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by 
the ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the terra 
firma of established health, your note, dear Ed- 
itor, reached me, requesting — an article. In Arti- 
culo Mortis, thought I ; but it is something hard, 
— and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved 
me. The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, 
seemed to link me on again to the petty business 
of life, which I had lost sight of ; a gentle call to 
activity, however trivial ; a wholesome weaning 
from that preposterous dream of self-absorption — 
the puffy state of sickness — in which I confess to 
have lain so long, insensible to the magazines 
and monarchies of the w^orld alike, to its laws, 
and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus 
is subsiding ; the acres, which in imagination I 
had spread over — for the sick man swells in the 
sole contemplation of his single sufferings till he 
becomes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to a 
span, and for the giant of self-importance, which 
I was so lately, you have me once again in my 
natural pretensions — the lean and meagre figure 
of your insignificant Essayist. 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 



So far from the position holding true, that great 
wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking) 
has a necessary alliance with insanity, the great- 
est wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to be 
the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind 
to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The great- 
ness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here 
chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the 
admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness 
is the disproportionate straining or excess of any 
one of them. ''So strong a wit," says Cowley, 
speaking of a poetical friend, 

" — ;-did Nature to him frame, 
At all things but his judgment overcame ; 
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 
Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding 
in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of 
exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their 
own experience, besides the spurious resemblance 
of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of 
dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the 
true poet dreams being awake. He is not pos- 
sessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. 
In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his 

335 



336 ^BSa^s of BUa. 

native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, 
and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning 
marl without dismay ; he wings his flight, with- 
out self-loss, through realms of chaos "and old 
night. " Or, if abandoning himself to that severer 
chaos of a " human mind untuned," he is content 
awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind 
(a sort of madness) with Timon ; neither is that 
madness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked 
but that — never letting the reins of reason wholly 
go, while most he seems to do so — -he has his bet- 
ter genius still whispering at his ear, with the 
good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or 
with the honest steward Flavins recommending 
kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to 
recede from humanity, he will be found the truest 
to it. From beyond the scope of Nature, if he 
summon possible existences, he subjugates them 
to the law of her consistency. He is beautifully 
loyal to that sovereign directress, even when he 
appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal 
tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters are 
tamed to his hand, even as that wild seabrood, 
shepherded by Proteus. He tames and he clothes 
them with attributes of flesh and blood till they 
wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced 
to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the 
witches, are as true to the laws of their own 
nature (ours with a difference) as Othello, Ham- 
let, and Macbeth. Herein the great and the lit- 
tle wits are differenced ; that if the latter wander 
ever so little from nature or actual existence, they 
lose themselves and their readers. Their phan- 
toms are lawless ; their visions nightmares. They 
do not create, which implies shaping and con- 



Sanity of ^rue (Senius. 337 

sistency. Their imaginations are not active, — 
for to be active is to call something into act and 
form, — but passive, as men in sick dreams. For 
the supernatural, or something superadded to 
v^hat we know of nature, they give you the 
plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and 
that these mental hallucinations were discov- 
erable only in the treatment of subjects out 
of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might 
with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a 
little wantonized ; but even, in the describing of 
real and every-day life, that which is before 
their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more 
deviate from nature, — show more of that inconse- 
quence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy, 
— than a great genius in his " maddest fits, " 
as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal 
to any one that is acquainted with the com- 
mon run of Lane's novels, — as they existed some 
twenty or thirty years back, — those scanty in- 
tellectual viands of the whole female reading 
public, till a happier genius arose and expelled for- 
ever the innutritions phantoms, — whether he has 
not found his brain more " betossed," his memory 
more puzzled, his sense of when and where more 
confounded, among the improbable events, the 
incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, 
or no characters, of some third-rate love-intrigue, 
— where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour 
and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate 
between Bath and Bond Street, — a more bewil- 
dering dreaminess induced upon him than he has 
felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of 
Spenser. In the productions we refer to, noth- 
ing but names and places is familiar ; the persons 
22 



338 Bssai26 ot ;i6Ua. 

are neither of this world nor of any other conceiv- 
able one ; an endless string of activities without 
purpose, of purposes destitute of motive. We 
meet phantoms in our known walks ; fantasques, 
only christened. In the poet we have names 
which announce fiction, and we have absolutely 
no place at all, for the things and persons of the 
"Fairy Queen" prate not of their "whereabouts." 
But in their inner nature, and the law of their 
speech and actions, we are at home and upon 
acquainted ground. The one turns life into a 
dream, the other to the wildest dreams gives the 
sobrieties of every-day occurrences. By what 
subtle art of tracing the mental processes it is 
effected, we are not philosophers enough to ex- 
plain ; but in that wonderful episode of the cave 
of Mammon, in which the Money God appears 
first in the lowest form of a miser, is then a work 
of metals, and becomes the God of all the treas- 
ures of the world, and has a daughter, Ambition, 
before whom all the world kneels for favors, — 
with the Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, 
with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but not im- 
pertinently, in the same stream, — that we should 
be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of 
treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, 
in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the 
shifting mutations of the most rambling dream, 
and our judgment yet all the time awake, and 
neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy, — is a 
proof of that hidden sanity which still guides the 
poet in the wildest seeming aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode 
is a copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is 
in some sort, — but what a copy ! Let the most 



Sanity ot ^rue (Benfus, 339 

romantic of us, that has been entertained all night 
with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent 
vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by 
his waking judgment. That which appeared so 
shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty 
was passive, when it comes under cool examina- 
tion, shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, 
that we are ashamed to have been so deluded ; 
and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster 
for a god. But the transitions in this episode are 
every whit as violent as in the most extravagant 
dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies 
them. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 



Among the deaths in our obituary for this 
month, I observe with concern "At his cottage 
on the Bath road, Captain Jackson." The name 
and attribution are common enough ; but a feel- 
ing like reproach persuades me, that this could 
have been no other in fact than my dear old 
friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago 
rented a tenement, which he was pleased to dig- 
nify with the appellation here used, about a mile 
from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, 
and the good turns they do, slide out of memory, 
and are recalled but by the surprise of some such 
sad memento as that which now lies before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, 
with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom 
he maintained with the port and notions of gentle- 
women upon that slender professional allowance. 
Comely girls they were, too. 

And I was in danger of forgetting this man ? — • 
his cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospital- 
ity, when first you set your foot in /he cottage — 
the anxious ministerings about you, where little 
or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. 
Althea's horn in a poor platter — the power of self- 
enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes 
to entertain you, he multiplied his means to 
bounties. 
340 



Captain S^acftson* 341 

You saw with your bodily eyes, indeed, what 
seemed a bare scrag — cold savings from the fore- 
gone meal — remnant hardly sufficient to send a 
mendicant from the door contented. But in the 
copious will, — the reveling imagination of your 
host — the *'mind, the mind, Master Shallow," 
whole beeves were spread before — hecatombs — 
no end appeared to the profusion. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; 
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it 
— the stamina were left — the elemental bone still 
flourished, divested of its accidents. 

''Let us live while we can," methinks I hear 
the open-handed creature exclaim; '* while we 
have, let us not want," "here is plenty left," 
"want for nothing," — with many more such 
hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and 
old concomitants of smoking boards, and feast- 
oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio 
of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the 
daughters', he would convey the remanent rind 
into his own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer 
the bone," etc., and declaring that he universally 
preferred the outside. For we had our table dis- 
tinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a 
manner sat above the salt. None but his guest 
or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, 
the fragments were vere hospitibus sacra. But of 
one thing or another there was always enough, 
and leavings ; only he would sometimes finish 
the remainder crust, to show that he wished no 
savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare 
occasions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine 
was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember. 



342 :665a^s ot ;i£lia. 

— "British beverage," he would say! "Push 
about, my boys," "Drink to your sweethearts, 
girls." At every meagre draught a toast must 
ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor 
were there, w4th none of the effects wanting. 
Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capa- 
cious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, 
with beams of generous port or madeira radiating 
to it from each of the table-corners. You got 
flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy upon 
words ; and reeled under the potency of his 
unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements. 

We had our songs, — "Why, Soldiers, why," 
— and the " British Grenadiers," in which last 
we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the 
daughters sang. Their proficiency was a nightly 
theme, — the masters he had given them, — the 
"no-expense" which he spared to accomplish 
them in a science "so necessary to young 
women." But then — they could not sing " with- 
out the instrument." 

Sacred, and by me never-to-be-violated secrets 
of Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims 
at grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnifi- 
cence.'* Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, 
if one of the bunch be extant ; thrummed by a 
thousand ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet 
of dearer Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be 
dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner 
warble ! A veil to be spread over the dear de- 
lighted face of the well-deluded father, who now, 
haply listening to the cherubic notes, scarce feels 
sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy 
time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings 
of that slender imasre of a voice. 



Captain JacKson* 343 

We were not without our literary talk either. 
It did not extend far, but as far as it went, it was 
good. It was bottomed well ; had good grourids 
to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which 
tradition authenticated to have been the same in 
which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had 
penned the greater part of his * ' Leonidas. " This 
circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of 
the present inmates that I could discover, appeared 
ever to have met with the poem in question. 
But that was no matter. Glover had^ written 
there, and the anecdote was pressed into the 
account of the family importance. It diffused a 
learned air through the apartment, the little side 
casement of which (the poet's study window) 
opening upon a superb view as far as the pretty 
spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial 
acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our 
host could call his own, yet gave occasion to an 
immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call it ? 
in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing 
summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, 
and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. 
It was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it 
was going over his grounds ; he was lord for the 
time of showing them, and you the implicit 
lookers-up to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your 
eyes — you had no time to detect his fallacies. 
He would say, ''Hand me the silver sugar- 
tongs " ; and before you could discover it was a 
single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb 
and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of 
'' the urn " for tea-kettle ; or by calling a homely 
bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their fur- 



344 B6Ba^0 Of IBM. 

niture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither 
did one nor the other, but by simply assuming 
that everything was handsome about him, you 
were positively at a demur what you did, or did 
not see at /he cottage. With nothing to live on, 
he seemed to live on eA'-ery thing. He had a 
stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is 
properly termed Content, for in truth he was not 
to be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds 
by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching, and even his w^ife, a 
sober native of North Britain, who generally saw 
things more as they were, was not proof against 
the continual collision of his credulity. Her 
daughters were rational and discreet young 
women ; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to 
their true circumstances. I have seen them 
assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was 
the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I 
am persuaded, not for any half hour together did 
they ever look their own prospects fairly in the 
face. There was no resisting the vortex of his 
temperament. His riotous imagination conjured 
up handsome settlements before their eyes, which 
kept them up in the eye of the world too, and 
seem at last to have realized themselves ; for they 
both have married since, I am told, more than 
respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on 
some subjects, or I should wish to convey some 
notion of the manner in which the pleasant creat- 
ure described the circumstances of his own wed- 
ding-day. I faintly remember something of a 
chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry into 
Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, 



Captain ^acftson. 345 

or carry her thither, I forget which. It so com- 
pletely made out the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which 
his own actual splendor at all corresponded with 
the world's notions on that subject. In homely 
cart, or traveling caravan, by whatever humble 
vehicle they chanced to be transported in less 
prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came 
back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating con- 
trast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that 
one day's state. It seemed an *' equipage etern " 
from which no power of fate or fortune, once 
mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face 
upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swag- 
ger away the sense of them before strangers may 
not be always discommendable. Tibbs, and 
Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our 
admiration than contempt. But for a man to put 
the cheat upon himself ; to play the Bobadil at 
home ; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to 
fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is 
a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mas- 
tery over fortune, which was reserved for my old 
friend Captain Jackson. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 



Sera tamen respexit. 
Libertas. — Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe. 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to 
waste the golden years of thy life — thy shining 
youth — in the irksome confinement of an office ; 
to have thy prison-days prolonged through middle 
age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without 
hope of release or respite ; to have lived to forget 
that there are such things as holidays, or to re- 
member them but as the prerogatives of child- 
hood ; then, and then only, will you be able to 
appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years, since I took my 
seat at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy 
was the transition at fourteen from the abundant 
playtime, and the frequently intervening vaca- 
tions of school-days, to the eight, nine, and some- 
times ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting- 
house. But time partially reconciles us to any 
thing. I gradually became content — doggedly 
contented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but 
Sundays, admirable as the institution of them is 
346 



^be Superannuated /IRan* 347 

Yor purposes of worship, are for that very reason 
the very worst adapted for days of unbending and 
recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me 
attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. 
I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and 
the ballad-singers, — the buzz and stirring murmur 
of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. 
The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all 
the guttering and endless succession of knacks 
and gew^gaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares 
of tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter 
through the less-busy parts of the metropolis so 
delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls deli- 
ciously to idle over — no busy faces to recreate the 
idle man who contemplates them ever passing 
by — the very face of business a charm by con- 
trast to his temporary relaxation from it. Noth- 
ing to be seen but unhappy countenances — or 
half-happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices and 
little tradesfolks, with here and there a servant- 
maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving 
all the week, with the habit has lost almost the 
capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily 
expressing the hoUowness of a day's pleasuring. 
The very strollers in the fields on that day look 
any thing but comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and 
a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer 
to go and air myself in my native fields of Hert- 
fordshire. This last was a great indulgence ; and 
the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone 
kept me up through the year, and made my 
durance tolerable. But when the week came 
round, did the glittering phantom of the distance 
keep touch with me .? or rather was it not a series 



348 iBssa^e of JBiia* 

of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of 
pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how 
to make the most of them ? Where was the quiet, 
where the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of 
it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, count- 
ing upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must 
intervene before such another snatch would come. 
Still the prospect of its coming threw something 
of an illumination upon the darker side of my cap- 
tivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely 
have sustained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigors of attendance, I 
have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a 
mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, 
during my latter years, had increased to such a 
degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my 
countenance. My health and my good spirits 
flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, 
to which I should be found unequal. Besides 
my daylight servitude, I served over again all 
night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors 
of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, 
and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no 
prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had 
grown to my desk, as it were, and the wood had 
entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally 
me upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; 
but I did not know that it had raised the suspi- 
cions of any of my employers, when, on the fifth 
of last month, a day ever to be remembered by 

me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling 

me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad 
looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So 
taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, 



Zbc Superannuated ^an, 349 

and added that I was afraid I should eventually 
be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some 
words, of course to hearten me, and there the 
matter rested. A whole week I remained labor- 
ing under the impression that I had acted impru- 
dently in my disclosure ; that I had foolishly 
given a handle against myself, and had been an- 
ticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in 
this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, 
in my whole life, when, on the evening of the 12th 
of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to 
go home (it might be about eight o'clock), I re- 
ceived an awful summons to attend the presence 
of the whole assembled firm in the formidable 
back parlor. I thought now my time is surely 
come, I have done for myself, I am going to be 
told that they have no longer occasion for me. 

L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, 

which was a little relief to me, — when to my utter 

astonishment B , the eldest partner, began 

a formal harangue to me on the length of my 
services, my very meritorious conduct during the 
whole of the time, (the deuce, thought I, how did 
he find out that ? I protest I never had the confi- 
dence to think as much). He went on to descant 
on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of 
life, (how my heart panted ! ) and asking me a 
few questions as to the amount of my own prop- 
erty, of which I have a little, ended with a pro- 
posal, to which his three partners nodded a grave 
assent, that I should accept from the house, 
which I had served so well, a pension for life to 
the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary 
— a magnificent offer ! I do not know what I 
answered between surprise and gratitude, but it 



350 16033^0 ot Blta. 

was understood that I accepted their proposal, and 
I was told that I was free from that hour to leave 
their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just 
ten minutes after eight I went home — forever. 
This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to con- 
ceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the 
most munificent firm in the world — the house 
of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 

Esto perpettia ! 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, over- 
whelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity ; I 
was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered 
about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that 
I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner 
in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty 
years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself 
with myself. It was like passing out of Time 
into Eternity, — for it is a sort of Eternity for a 
man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed 
to me that I had more time on my hands than I 
could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in 
time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; 
I could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted 
some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my 
estates in Time for me. And here let me caution 
persons grown old in active business, not lightly, 
nor without weighing their own resources, to 
forego their customary employment all at once, 
for there may be danger in it. I feel it by 
myself, but I know that my resources are suffi- 
cient ; and now that those first giddy raptures 
have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the 
blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. 



XLbc SiiperannuateD /iRan. 351 

Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. 
If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it 
away ; but I do no^ walk all day long, as I used 
to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles 
a day, to make the most of them. If Time were 
troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do 7io^ 
read in that violent measure, with which, having 
no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to 
weary out my head and eyesight in bygone win- 
ters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; 
I let it come to me. I am like the man 

that's bom, and has his years come to him, 
In some green desert. 

''Years ! " you will say ; ''what is this super- 
annuated simpleton calculating upon ? He has 
already told us he is past fifty. " 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but 
deduct out of them the hours which I have lived 
to other people, and not to myself, and you will 
find me still a young fellow. For /ha/ is the only 
true Time which a man can properly call his own, 
that which he has all to himself ; the rest, though 
in some sense he may be said to live it, is other 
people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor 
days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me 
three-fold. My next ten years, if I stretch so far, 
will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a 
fair rule-of-three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at 
the commencement of my freedom, and of which 
all traces are not yet gone, one was that a vast 
tract of time had intervened since I quitted the 



352 B05ai26 ot Blfa. 

Counting-House. I could not conceive of it as 
an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the 
clerks with whom I had for so many years, and 
for so many hours in each day of the year, been 
closely associated, — being suddenly removed from 
them, — they seemed as dead to me. There is a 
fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this 
fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speak- 
ing of a friend's death : 

'Twas but just now he went away ; 
I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been 
fain to go among them once or twice since, to 
visit my old desk-fellows, — my co-brethren of the 
quill,— that I had left below in the state militant. 
Not all the kindness with which they received me 
could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity 
which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We 
cracked some of our old jokes, but methought 
they went off but faintly. My old desk, the peg 
where I hung my hat, were appropriated to an- 
other. I knew it must be, but I could not take it 

kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not feel some 

remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting my old 
compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six- 
and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with their 
jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my pro- 
fessional road. Had it been so rugged then, 
after all ? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is 
too late to repent ; and I also know that these 
suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on 



Zbc Superannuated Man, 353 

such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had 
violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at 
least not courteous. I shall be some time before 
I get quite reconciled to the separation. Fare- 
well, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and 
again I will come among ye, if I shall have your 

leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and 

friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, and gen- 
tlemanly ! PI , officious to do and to volun- 
teer good services ! — and thou, thou dreary pile, 
fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, 
stately house of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine 
passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, 
where candles for one half the year supplied the 
place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to 
my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! 
In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection 
of some wandering bookseller, my "works!" 
There let them rest, as I do from my labors, piled 
on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than 
ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! My mantle 
I bequeath among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
communication. At that period I was approach- 
ing to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I 
boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative 
only. Something of the first flutter was left ; an 
unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak 
eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old 
chains, forsooth, as if they had been some neces- 
sary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, 
from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some 
revolution returned upon the world. I am now 
as if I had never been other than my own master. 
It is natural for me to go where I please, to do 
23 



354 Bssa^s of leiia. 

what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in 
the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that 
I have been sauntering there at that very hour for 
years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a book- 
stall. Methinks I have been thirty years a col- 
lector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. 
I find myself before a fine picture in the morning. 
Was it ever otherwise ? What has become of Fish 
Street hill ? Where is Fen church Street ? Stones 
of old Mincing Lane, which I have worn with 
my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, 
to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your 
everlasting flints now vocal ? 1 indent the gayer 
flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am 
strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no 
hyperbole when I ventured to compare the change 
in my condition to a passing into another world. 
Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost 
all distinction of season. I do not know the day 
of the week or of the month. Each day used to 
be individually felt by me in its reference to the 
foreign post days ; in its distance from, or pro- 
pinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednes- 
day feelings, my Saturday nights sensations. 
The genius of each day was upon me distinctly 
duringthe wholeof it, affecting my appetite, spirits, 
etc. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary 
five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath 
recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop 
white.? What is gone of Black Monday.? All 
days are the same. Sunday itself, — that unfortu- 
nate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, 
what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over- 
care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out 
of it, — is melted down into a week-day. I can 



Zbc Superannuated jfiBan. 355 

spare to go to church now without grudging the 
huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the 
holiday. I have Time for everything. I can visit 
a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much 
occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over 
him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure 
with me to Windsor this fine May morning. It 
is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, 
whom I have left behind in the world, carking 
and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in 
the same eternal round — and what is it all for ? 
A man can never have too much Time to himself, 
nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would 
christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do noth- 
ing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element 
as long as he is operative. I am altogether for 
the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake 
come and swallow up those accursed cotton-mills ? 
Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it 
down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer . . ., clerk to the Firm of, 
etc. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with 
in trim gardens. I am already come to be known 
by my vacant stare and careless gesture, peram- 
bulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled 
purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They 
tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been 
buried so long with my other good parts, has 
begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into 
gentility perceptibly. When I take up a news- 
paper, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus 
operatum est. I have done all that I came into 
this world to do. I have worked task- work, and 
have the rest of the day to myself. 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 



It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftes- 
bury and Sir William Temple are models of the 
genteel style in writing. We should prefer saying 
— of the lordly, and gentlemanly. Nothing can 
be more unlike than the inflated finical rhapsodies 
of Shaftesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of 
Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both 
writers ; but in the one it is only insinuated grace- 
fully, in the other it stands out offensively. The 
peer seems to have written with his coronet on, 
and his earl's mantle before him ; the commoner 
in his elbow-chair and undress. What can be 
more pleasant than the way in which the retired 
statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the 
latter in his delightful retreat at Shene.? They 
scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an 
authority is quoted under an ambassador. Don 
Francisco de Melo, a ''Portugal Envoy in Eng- 
land, " tells him it was frequent in his country for 
men, spent with age and other decays, so as they 
could not hope for above a year or two of life, to 
ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after 
their arrival there to go on a great length, some- 
times of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the 
force of that vigor they recovered with that re- 
move. ''Whether such an effect (Temple beauti- 
356 



XLhc <3enteel Stisle fn TKIlnting. 357 

fully adds) might grow from the air, or the fruits 
of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, 
which is the fountain of light and heat, when 
their natural heat was so far decayed ; or whether 
the piecing out of an old man's life were worth 
the pains, I cannot tell : perhaps the play is not 
worth the candle. " Monsieur Pompone, ' ' French 
Ambassador, in his (Sir William's) time, at the 
Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never 
heard of any man in France that arrived at a 
hundred years of age ; a limitation of life which 
the old gentleman imputes to the excellence of 
their climate, giving them such a liveliness of 
temper and humor, as disposes them to more 
pleasures of all kinds than in other countries ; and 
moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. The 
*'late Robert, Earl of Leicester," furnishes him 
with a story of a Countess of Desmond, married 
out of England in Edward the Fourth's time, 
and who lived far in King James' reign. The 
* ' same noble person " gives him an account, how 
in such a year, in the same reign, there went 
about the country a set of morris-dancers, com- 
posed of ten men who danced, a Maidmarian, 
and a tabor and a pipe ; and how these twelve, 
one with another, made up twelve hundred years. 
''It was not so much (says Temple) that so many 
in one small county (Hertfordshire) should live to 
that age, as that they should be in vigor and in 
humor to travel and to dance." Monsieur Zuli- 
chem, one of his colleagues at the Hague, informs 
him of a cure for the gout ; which is confirmed by 
another " Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that 
town, who had tried it. Old Prince Maurice of 
Nassau recommends to him the use of hammocks 



358 lSBea^6 of Blla. 

in that complaint, having^ been allured to sleep, 
while suffering under it himself, by the ** constant 
motion or swinging of those airy beds." Count 
Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who *'was killed 
last summer before Maestricht," impart to him 
their experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more inno- 
cently disclosed, than where he takes for granted 
the compliments paid by foreigners to his 
fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what 
we esteem the best, he can truly say, that the 
French, who have eaten his peaches and grapes 
at Shene, in no very ill year, have generally con- 
cluded that the last are as good as any they have 
eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau ; and 
the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony. 
Italians have agreed his white figs to be as good 
as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier 
kind of white fig there ; for in the later kind and 
the blue, we cannot come near the warm climates, 
no more than in the Frontignac or Muscat grape. 
His orange-trees, too, are as large as any he saw 
when he was young in France, except those of 
Fontainebleau ; or what he has seen since in the 
Low Countries, except some very old ones of the 
Prince of Orange's. Of grapes he had the honor 
of bringing over four sorts into England, which he 
enumerates, and supposes that they are all by this 
time pretty common among some gardeners in 
his neighborhood, as well as several persons of 
quality ; for he ever thought all things of this kind 
** the commoner they are made the better." The 
garden pedantry with which he asserts that 't is to 
little purpose to plant any of the best fruits, as 
peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond 



XLbc Oentecl Stsle in maiting. 359 

Northamptonshire at the farthest northwards, and 
praises the ''Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt," for 
attempting nothing- beyond cherries in that cold 
climate, is equally pleasant and in character. *'I 
may perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden 
Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) *'be 
allowed to know something of this trade, since I 
have so long allowed myself to be good for noth- 
ing else which few men will do, or enjoy their 
gardens, without often looking abroad to see how 
matters play, what motions in the state, and what 
invitations they may hope for into other scenes. 
For my own part, as the country life, and this 
part of it more particularly, were the inclination 
of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my 
age ; and I can truly say that, among many great 
employments that have fallen to my share, I have 
never asked or sought for any of them, but have 
often endeavored to escape from them, into the 
ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man 
may go his own way and in his own pace, in the 
common paths and circles of life. The measure 
of choosing well is whether a man likes what he 
has chosen, which, I thank God, has befallen me ; 
and though among the follies of my life, building 
and planting have not been the least, and have 
cost me more than I have the confidence to own, 
yet they have been fully recompensed by the 
sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, 
since my resolution taken of never entering again 
into any public employments, I have passed five 
years without ever once going to town, though I 
am almost in sight of it, and have a house there 
always ready to receive me. Nor has this been 
any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but 



360 :635ai2S ot ;6Ua. 

a mere want of desire or humor to make so small 
a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I can 
truly say with Horace, Me quoties reficit, etc. 

" Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away." 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this 
easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, 
which was mostly subordinate to nature and ten- 
derness, has seduced him to a string of felicitous 
antithesis, which, it is obvious to remark, have 
been a model to Addison and succeeding essayists. 
" Who would not be covetous, and with reason," 
he says, ' ' if health could be purchased with gold .? 
who not ambitious, if it were at the command of 
power, or restored by honor 1 but, alas ! a white 
staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a 
common cane ; nor a blue ribbon bind up a wound 
so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold or of dia- 
monds will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing 
them ; and an aching head will be no more eased 
by wearing a crown than a common nightcap." 

In a far better style, and more accordant with 
his own humor of plainness, are the concluding 
sentences of his " Discourse upon Poetry. " Tem- 
ple took a part in the controversy about the an- 
cient and the modern learning ; and, with that par- 
tiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, 
whose state engagements had left him little leisure 
to look into modern productions, while his retire- 



^be (Benteel Stsle in Maitino. 361 

ment gave him occasion to look back upon the 
classic studies of his youth, — decided in favor of 
the latter. ' ' Certain it is, " he says, * ' that whether 
the fierceness of the Gothic humors, or noise of 
their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the 
unequal mixture of the modern languages would 
not bear it, — the great heights and excellency both 
of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning 
and empire, and have never since recovered the 
admiration and applauses that before attended 
them. Yet such as they are amongst us, they 
must be confessed to be the softest and the sweet- 
est, the most general and most innocent amuse- 
ments of common time and life. They still find 
room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of 
shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the 
dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or 
divert the violent passions and perturbations of 
the greatest and the busiest men. And both these 
effects are of equal use to human life ; for the mind 
of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable 
to the beholder nor the voyager in a calm or in a 
storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by 
gentle gales ; — and so the mind, when moved by 
soft and easy passions or affections. I know very 
well that many who pretend to be wise by the 
forms of being grave, are apt to despise both po- 
etry and music, as toys and trifles too light for the 
use or entertainment of serious men. But who- 
ever find themselves wholly insensible to their 
charms, would, I think, do well to keep their own 
counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper, 
and bringing the goodness of their natures, if not 
of their understandings, into question. While this 
world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and re- 



362 JBssa^e ot ;i6lia, 

quest of these two entertainments will do so too ; 
and happy those that content themselves with 
these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and 
do not trouble the world or other men, because 
they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody 
hurts them." *' When all is done (he concludes), 
human life is at the greatest and the best but like 
a forward child, that must be played with, and 
humored a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, 
and then the care is over." 



BARBARA S- 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 
4, I forget which it was, just as the clock had 

struck one, Barbara S -, with her accustomed 

punctuality, ascended the long rambling staircase, 
with awTcward interposed landing-places, which 
led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk 
in it, whereat sat the then treasurer of (what few 
of our readers may remember) the old Bath Thea- 
tre. All over the island it was the custom, and 
remains so I believe to this day, for the players 
to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. 
It was not much that Barbara had to claim. 

The little maid had just entered her eleventh 
year, but her important station at the theatre, as 
it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt 
to accrue from her pious application of her small 
earnmgs, had given an air 01 womanhood to her 
steps and to her behavior. You would have taken 
her to have been at least five years older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in 
choruses, or where children were wanted to fill 
up the scene. But the manager, observing a dili- 
gence and adroitn^^s in her above her age, had 
for some few months past intrusted to her the per- 
formance of whole parts. You may guess the self- 
consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had 



364 iBssdi^s ot Blfa. 

already drawn tears in young Arthur ; had rallied 
Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of 
York ; and in her turn had rebuked that petulance 
when she was Prince of Wales. She would have 
done the elder child in Morton's pathetic after-piece 
to the life ; but as yet the ' ' Children in the Wood " 
was not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged 
woman, I have seen some of these small parts, 
each making two or three pages at most, copied 
out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who 
doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and 
fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the estab- 
lishment. But such as they were, blotted and 
scrawled as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and 
in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delight- 
ful sight to behold them bound up in costliest mo- 
rocco, each single, — each small part making a dook, 
with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, etc. She had con- 
scientiously kept them as they had been delivered 
to her ; not a blot had been effaced or tampered 
with. They were precious to her for their affect- 
ing remembrancings. They were her pn'na'pia, 
her rudiments ; the elementary atoms, the little 
steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. 
'' What," she would say, ''could India-rubber, or 
a pumice-stone, have done for these darlings ? " 

I am in no hurry to begin my story, — indeed 
I have little or none to tell, — so I will just men- 
tion an observation of hers connected with that 
interesting time. ^' " 

Not long before she died I had been discours- 
ing with her on the quantity of real present emo- 
tion which a great tragic performer experiences 
during acting. I ventured to think, that though 



asarbara S -. 365 

in the first instance such players must have pos- 
sessed the feelings which they so powerfully 
called up in others, yet by frequent repetition 
those feelings must become deadened in great 
measure, and the performer trust to the memory 
of past emotion, rather than express a present 
one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that 
with a truly great tragedian the operation, by 
which such effects were produced upon an audi- 
ence, could ever degrade itself into what was 
purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoid- 
ing to instance in her 5<?^experience, she told me, 
that so long ago as when she used to play the part 
of the little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I think 
it was), when that impressive actress had been 
bending over her in some heartrending colloquy, 
she has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, 
which (to use her powerful expression) have per- 
fectly scalded her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter, 
but it was som.e great actress of that day. The 
name is indifferent ; but the fact of the scalding 
tears I most distinctly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, 
and am not sure that an impediment in my speech 
(which certainly kept me but of the pulpit) even 
more than certain personal disqualifications, 
which are often got over in that profession,' did 
not prevent me at one time of life from adopting 
it. I have had the honor (I must ever call it) 
once to have been admitted to the tea-table of 
Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist with 
Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good- 
humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed 
as friend to friend with her accomplished hus- 



366 06603^6 Ot iSlin* 

band. I have been indulged with a classical con- 
ference with Macready ; and with a sight of the 
Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Mathews', when 
the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of 
the old actors (whom he loves so much), went 
over it with me, supplying to his capital collec- 
tion, what alone the artist could not give them — 
voice ; and their living motion. Old tones, half- 
faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Baddeley, have 
lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin 
he could not restore to me. I have supped with 
; but I am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say, — at the desk of the then 
treasurer of the old Bath theatre, — not Diamond's, 
— presented herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable 
circumstances. The father had practised, I be- 
lieve, as an apothecary in the town. But his 
practice, from causes which I feel my own in- 
firmity too sensibly that way to arraign, — or 
perhaps from that pure infelicity which accom- 
panies some people in their walk through life, and 
which it is impossible to lay at the door of impru- 
dence, — was now reduced to nothing. They 
were in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when 
the manager, who knew and respected them in 
better days, took the little Barbara into his com- 
pany. 

At the period I commenced with, her slender 
earnings were the sole support of the family, 
including two younger sisters. I must throw 
a veil over some mortifying circumstances. 
Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was 
the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their 
only) meal of meat. 



^Barbara S ♦ 367 

One thing- I will only mention, that in some 
child's part, where in her theatrical character she 
was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara !), 
some comic actor, who was for the night caterer 
for this dainty — in the misguided humor of his 
part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt 
(O grief and pain of heart to Barbara !) 
that when she crammed a portion of it into her 
mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; 
and what with shame of her ill-acted part, and 
pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, 
her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a 
flood of tears, which the well-fed spectators were 
totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved 
her. 

This was the little, starved, meritorious maid, 
who stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, 
for her Saturday's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many 
old theatrical people besides herself say, of all 
men least calculated for a treasurer. He had no 
head for accounts, paid away at random, kept 
scarce any books, and summing up at the week's 
end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, 
blessed himself that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half 
guinea. By mistake he popped into her hand — a 
whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mis- 
take ; God knows, Ravenscroft would never have 
discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those 
uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of 



368 3Es6as0 ot JSlin. 

an unusual weight of metal pressing her little 
hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From her 
parents and those about her she had imbibed no 
contrary influence. But then they had taught 
her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not 
always porticos of moral philosophy. This little 
maid had no instinct to evil, but then she might 
be said to have no fixed principle. She had 
heard honesty commended, but never dreamed 
of its application to herself She thought of it as 
something which concerned grown-up people, 
men and women. She had never known tempta- 
tion, or thought of preparing resistance against 
it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old 
treasurer, and explain to him his blunder. He 
was already so confused with age, besides a 
natural want of punctuality, that she would have 
had some difficulty in making him understand it. 
She saw fha/ in an instant. And then it was such 
a bit of money ! and then the image of a larger 
allowance of butcher's-meat on their table next 
day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, 
and her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravens- 
croft had always been so good-natured, had stood 
her friend behind the scenes, and even recom- 
mended her promotion to some of her little parts. 
But again the old man was reputed to be worth a 
world of money. He was supposed to have fifty 
pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then 
came staring upon her the figures of her little 
stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when she 
looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, 



JSarbara S . 369 

which her stituation at the theatre had made it 
indispensable for her mother to provide for her, 
with hard straining- and pinching from the family 
stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover 
their poor feet with the same, — and how then 
they could accompany her to rehearsals, which 
they had hitherto been precluded from doing-, by 
reason of their unfashionable attire, — in these 
thoughts she reached the second landing-place, — 
the second, I mean, from the top, — for there was 
still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never- failing friend did step in, — for 
at that moment a strength not her own, I have 
heard her say, was revealed to her, — a reason 
above reasoning, — and without her own agency, 
as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move), 
she found herself transported back to the individual 
desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old 
hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back 
the refunded treasure, and who had been sitting 
(good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, 
which to her were anxious ages, and from that 
moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she 
knew the quality of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her 
profession brightened up the feet, and the pros- 
pects, of her little sisters, set the whole family 
upon their legs again, and released her from the 
difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a land- 
ing-place. 

I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not 
much short of mortification to her, to see the cool- 
ness with which the old man pocketed the differ- 
ence, which had caused her such mortal throes. 
24 



370 J665as0 of jeifa. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, 
from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then 
sixty-seven years of age (she died soon after), and 
to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have 
sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that 
power of rending the heart in the representation 
of conflicting emotions, for which in after-years 
she was considered as little inferior (if at all so in 
the part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 

* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she 
changed by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, 
and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, 
when I knew her. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 

IN A LETTER TO R S , ESQ. 

Though in some points of doctrine, and per- 
haps of discipline, I am diffident of lending a 
perfect assent to that church which you have so 
worthily historified, yet may the ill time never 
come to me, when with a chilled heart or a 
portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter 
her beautiful and time-hallowed edifices. Judge 
then of my mortification when, after attending 
the choral anthems of last Wednesday at West- 
minster, and being desirous of renewing my ac- 
quaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs 
and antiquities there, I found myself excluded ; 
turned out like a dog, or some profane person, 
into the common street, with feelings not very 
congenial to the place, or to the solemn service 
which I had been listening to. It was ajar after 
that music. 

You had your education at Westminster ; and 
doubtless among those dim aisles and cloisters, 
you must have gathered much of that devotional 
feeling in those young years, on which your 
purest mind feeds still — and may it feed ! The 
antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and gracefully 
blending ever w^ith the religious, may have been 
sown in you among those wrecks of splendid 
mortality. You owe it to the place of your edu- 

371 



372 Bssa^s ot BUa, 

cation ; you owe it to your learned fondness for 
the architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it to 
the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establish- 
ment, which is daily lessened and called in ques- 
tion through these practices — to speak aloud your 
sense of them ; never to desist raising your voice 
against them till they be totally done away with 
and abolished ; till the doors of Westminster 
Abbey be no longer closed against the decent 
though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless 
devotee, who must commit an injury against his 
family economy, if he would be indulged with a 
bare admission within its walls. You owe it to 
the decencies which you wish to see maintained 
in its impressive services, that our cathedral be 
no longer an object of inspection to the poor at 
those times only, in which they must rob from 
their attendance on the worship every minute 
which they can bestow upon the fabric. In vain 
the public prints have taken up this subject, in 
vain such poor nameless writers as myself express 
their indignation. A word from you, sir, — a hint 
in your journal, — would be sufficient to fling open 
the doors of the beautiful temple again, as we can 
remember them when we were boys. At that 
time of life, what would the imaginative faculty 
(such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the 
entrance to so much reflection had been ob- 
structed by the demand of so much silver? If we 
had scraped it up to gain an occasional admis- 
sion (as we certainly should have done), would 
the sight of those old tombs have been as impres- 
sive to us (while we have been weighing anx- 
iously prudence against sentiment) as when the 
gates stood open as those of the adjacent park ; 



^be Q^ombs in tbe U'bbc^. 373 

when we could walk in at any time, as the mood 
brought us, for a shorter, or longer time, as that 
lasted? Is the being shown over a place the 
same as silently for ourselves detecting the 
genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey 
now can a person find entrance (out of service 
time) under the sum of /wo shillings. The rich 
and the great will smile at the anticlimax, pre- 
sumed to lie in these two short words. But you 
can tell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how 
much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much 
taste and genius, may coexist, especially in 
youth, with a purse incompetent to this demand. 
A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to 
the metropolis, presented himself for admission to 
St. Paul's. At the same time a decently-clothed 
man, with as decent a wife and child, were bar- 
gaining for the same indulgence. The price was 
only twopence each person. The poor but decent 
man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were 
three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. 
Perhaps he wished to have seen the Tomb of Nel- 
son. Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was 
his object. But in the state of his finances, even 
sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell 
the Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it 
more impressively) ; instruct them of what value 
these insignificant pieces of money, these minims 
to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. 
Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle 
not the suggestions of your better nature with the 
pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would 
expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your 
boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob 
in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the 



374 JEesa^s ot Blia. 

rabble come there, or trouble their heads about 
such speculations ? It is all that you can do to 
drive them into your churches ; they do not 
voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas ! 
no passion for antiquities ; for tomb of king or 
prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would 
be no longer the rabble. 

For forty years that I have known the Fabric, 
the only well-attested charge of violation ad- 
duced, has been — a ridiculous dismemberment 
committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy. 
Major Andre. And is it for this — the wanton mis- 
chief of some school-boy, fired perhaps with raw 
notions of Transatlantic Freedom — or the remote 
possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so 
easily to be prevented by stationing a constable 
within the walls, if the vergers are incompetent 
to the duty, — is it upon such wretched pretences 
that the people of England are made to pay a 
new Peter's Pence so long abrogated ; or must 
content themselves with contemplating the 
ragged Exterior of their Cathedral ? The mischief 
was done about the time that you were a scholar 
there. Do you know any thing about the unfor- 
tunate relic ? 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? 

I DO not know when I have experienced a 
stranger sensation than on seeing my old friend 

G-- — D , who had been paying me a morning 

visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Isb'ng- 
ton, upon taking leave, instead of turning down 
the right-hand path by which he had entered — with 
staff in hand, and at noon-day deliberately march 
right forwards into the midst of the stream that 
runs by us, and totally disappear. 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been 
appalling enough ; but in the broad open day- 
light to witness such an unreserved motion towards 
self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me 
all power of speculation. 

How I found my feet I know not. Conscious- 
ness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, 
whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing 
but the silvery apparition of a good white head 
emerging ; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen 
that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the 
skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he 
was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a 
load more precious than his who bore Anchises. 

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious 
zeal of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a 

375 



376 iBsea^e ot JBlin. 

little too late to participate in the honors of the 
rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to 
communicate their advice as to the recovery ; 
prescribing variously the application or non-appli- 
cation, of salt, etc., to the person of the patient. 
Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the 
stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more 
sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, pro- 
posed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel 
was, and impossible, as one should think, to be 
missed on, — shall I confess ? — in this emergency 
it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great 
previous exertions — and mine had not been incon- 
siderable — are commonly followed by a debility 
of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. 

Monoculus — for so, in default of catching his 
true name, I choose to designate the medical 
gentleman who now appeared — is a grave, middle 
aged person, who, without having studied at the 
college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, 
hath employed a great portion of his valuable 
time in experimental processes upon the bodies 
of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the 
vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem 
extinct and lost forever. He omitted no occa- 
sion of obtruding his services, from a case of 
common surfeit suffocation to the ignobler ob- 
structions, sometimes induced by a too wilful 
application of the plant cannabis outwardly. But 
though he declineth not altogether these drier 
extinctions, his occupation tendeth, for the most 
part, to water-practice ; for the convenience of 
which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters near 
the grand repository of the stream mentioned, 
where day and night, from his little watch-tower, 



Bmicus IReDlvivus. 377 

at the Middleton's Head, he listen eth to detect the 
wrecks of drowned mortality, — partly, as he saith, 
to be upon the spot, — and partly, because the 
liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself, 
and his patients, on these distressing occasions, 
are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at 
these common hostelries than in the shops and 
phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived 
to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he 
can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance ; 
and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He 
weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally 
of a sad brown, but which, by time and frequency 
of nightly divings, has been dinged into a true 
professional sable. He passeth by the name of 
Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. 
His remedy — after a sufficient application of warm 
blankets, friction, etc., is a simple tumbler or 
more, of the purest cognac, with water, made as 
hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he 
findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish 
subject, he condescendeth to be the taster ; and 
showeth, by his own example, the innocuous 
nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more 
kind or encouraging than this procedure. It 
addeth confidence to the patient, to see his medi- 
cal adviser go hand in hand with himself in the 
remedy. When the doctor swalloweth his own 
draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge 
him in the potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a hu- 
mane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, 
scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear 
it out in the endeavor to save the lives of others, 
— his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty 
I could press*a crown upon him, for the price of 



378 J660as6 of iBlia* 

restoring the existence of such an invaluable 
creature to society as G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the sub- 
siding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. 
It seemed to have given a shake to memory, call- 
ing up notice after notice of all the providential 
deliverances he had experienced in the course 
of his long and innocent life. Sitting up in my 
couch, — my couch which, naked and void of fur- 
niture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it 
administered, shall be honored with costly val- 
ance, at some price, and henceforth be a state- 
bed at Colebrook, — he discoursed of marvelous 
escapes — by carelessness of nurses — by pails of 
gelid, and kettles of the boiling element in infancy 
— by orchard pranks, and snapping twigs, in 
school-boy frolics — by descent of tiles at Trump- 
ington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by 
studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance 
— by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore 
throbbings of the learned head. Anon, he would 
burst out into little fragments of chanting — of 
songs long ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not 
remembered before since childhood, but coming 
up now, when his heart was made tender as a 
child's, — for the tremor cordis, in the retrospect of 
a recent deliverance, as in a case of impending 
danger, acting upon an innocent heart, will pro- 
duce a self-tenderness, which we should do ill to 
christen cowardice ; and Shakespeare, in the latter 
crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember 
the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow 
rivers. 

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark 
you were like to have extinguished forever 1 



Bmicus 1RcDivivu0, 379 

Your salubrious streams to this city, for now- 
near two centuries, would hardly have atoned for 
what you were in a moment washing away. 
Mockery of a river, — liquid artifice, — wretched 
conduit ! henceforth rank with canals, and slug- 
gish aqueducts. Was it for this that, smit in 
boyhood with the explorations of that Abyssinian 
traveler, I paced the vales of Amwell to explore 
your tributary springs, to trace your salutory 
w^aters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and 
cultured Enfield parks ? — Ye have no swans — no 
Naiads — no river God, — or did the benevolent 
hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him 
in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of 
your waters ? 

Had he been drowned in Cam, there w^ould 
have been some consonancy in it ; but what wil- 
lows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist 
sepulture ? — or, having no name, besides that 
unmeaning assumption of e/er?zal novity, did ye 
think to get one by the noble prize, and hence- 
forth to be termed the Stream Dyerian ? 

And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

I protest, George, you shall not venture out 
again — no, not by daylight — without a sufficient 
pair of spectacles — ,in your musing moods espe- 
cially. Your absence of mind we have borne, 
till your presence of body came to be called in 
question by it. You shall not go wandering into 
Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, 
man, to turn dipper at your years, after your 
many tracts in favor of sprinkling only I 



380 3660a^0 ot J6lfa. 

I have nothing but water in my head o' nights 
since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am 
with Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold 
Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his 
good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), ** I sink in 
deep waters : the billows go over my head, all 
the waves go over me. Selah. " Then I have 
before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. 
I cry out too late to save. Next follow^ — a 
mournful procession — suicidal faces, saved against 
their will from drowning ; dolefully trailing a 
length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds 
pendent from locks of watchet hue, — constrained 
Lazari, — Pluto's half-subjects, — stolen fees from 
the grave, — bilking Charon of his fare. . At their 
head Arion — or is it G. D. } — in his singing gar- 
ments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and 
votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) 
snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the 
stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of 
Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are 
constrained to drown outright, by wharves where 
Ophelia twice acts her muddy death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that 
invisible world, when one of us approacheth (as 
my friend did so lately) to their inexorable pre- 
cincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's 
door, the sensation aroused within the palace must 
be considerable ; and the grim Feature, by mod- 
ern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must 
have learned by this time to pity Tantalus. 

A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of 
the Elysian shades, when the near arrival ofG. D. 
was announced by no equivocal indications. 
From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler 



Bm(cu0 1ReDi^?(vu0♦ 381 

and the graver ghosts — poet, or historian — of Gre- 
cian or of Roman lore, — to crown with unfading 
chaplets the half-finished love-labors of their 
unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expected, — 
him Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter, — him the sweet 
lyrist of Peter House, whom he had barely seen 
upon earth,* with newest airs prepared to greet 

; and, patron of the gentle Christ's boy — 

who should have been his patron through life, 
— the mild Askew, with longing aspirations, 
leaned foremost from his venerable ^Esculapian 
chair, to welcome into that happy company the 
matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions 
in the boy he himself upon earth had so prophet* 
ically fed and watered. 

* Graium tantum vidit. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 



Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — 
are among the very best of their sort. They fall 
below the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and 
high yet most modest spirit of self-approval, of 
Milton, in his compositions of a similar structure. 
They are in truth what Milton, censuring the Arca- 
dia, says of that work (to which they are a sort of 
after-tune or application), " vain and amatorious " 
enough, yet the things in their kind (as he con- 
fesses to be true of the romance) may be " full of 
worth and wit." They savor of the courtier, it 
must be allowed, and not of the commonwealths- « 
man. But Milton was a courtier when he wrote 
the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more 
a courtier when he composed the Arcades. When 
the national struggle was to begin, he becom- 
ingly cast these vanities behind him ; and if the 
order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis 
which preceded the Revolution, there is no reason 
why he should not have acted the same part in 
that emergency, which has glorified the name of 
a later Sydney. He did not want for plainness 
or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French 
match may testify he could speak his mind freely to 
princes. The times did not call him to the scaifold. 

The sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of 
Milton were the compositions of his maturest 
years. Those of Sydney, which I am about to 
382 



Some Sonnets ot Sir pbiUp SsDnes* 383 

produce, were written in the very heyday of his 
blood. They are stuck full of amorous fancies — 
far-fetched conceits, befitting his occupation ; for 
True Love thinks no labor to send out Thoughts 
upon the vast, and more than Indian voyages, to 
bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, 
jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating 
similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the 
Beloved. We must be lovers — or at least the 
cooling touch of time, the circum prcecordia frigus, 
must not have so damped our faculties, as to take 
away our recollection that we were once so — be- 
fore we can duly appreciate the glorious vani- 
ties, and graceful hyperboles of the passion. The 
images which lie before our feet (though by 
some accounted the only natural) are least natural 
for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies 
by. They may serve for the loves of Tibullus, 
or the dear Author of the Schoolmistress ; for 
passions that creep and whine in Elegies and 
Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved 
at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses 
{ad Leonoram, I mean) have rather erred on the 
farther side ; and that the poet came not much 
short of a religious indecorum, when he could 
thus apostrophize a singing-girl : — 

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 

Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibui. 
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 

Nam tua presentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli. 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 

Sensim immortalia assuescere posse sono, 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, Per cunctaque 

FUSUS, 
IN TE UNA LOQUITUR, CETERA MUTUS HABET. 



384 )Es6a^0 of Blfa. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it 
requires some candor of construction (besides the 
slight darkening of a dead language) to cast a 
veil over the ugly appearance of something very 
like blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the 
Lover would have been staggered, if he had gone 
about to express the same thought in English. I 
am sure Sydney had no flights like this. His ex- 
travaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he 
takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellow- 
ship with his mortal passions. 



With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb' st the skies ; 

How silently ; and with how wan a face ? 

What ! may it be that even in heavenly place 

That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries .'* 

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in thy looks ; thy languish t grace 

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 

Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, 

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit ? 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be .•* 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefuhiess ! 

This last line of this poem is a little obscured by 
transposition. He means, Do they call ungrate- 
fulness there a virtue .? 



II. 



Come Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
The indifferent judge between the high and low , 



Some Sonnets of Sir pbillp B^t>nc^* 385 

With shield of proof shield me from out of the prease * 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 

make in me those civil wars to cease I 

1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 

Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me. 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 



III. 

The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes. 
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage. 
O fools, or overwise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 



IV. 

Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 

Seem most alone in greatest company. 

With dearth of words or answers quite awry 

To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 

They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies, 

That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 

So in my swelling breast, that only I 

Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 

Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess 

Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass j 



* Press. 
25 



386 iBssn^s ot EUa. 

But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess, 
That makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 



V. 

Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lancet 
Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
Both by the judgment of the English eyes. 
And of some sent by that sweet enemy, — France, 
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
His praise to slight, which from good use doth rise ; 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 
My blood from them, who did excel in this, 
Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 

VL 

In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 
And yet to break more staves did me address, 
"While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride- 
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 
In Mars' livery, prancing in the press, 
" What now, Sir Fool ! " said he : "I would no less, 
Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 
Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes, 
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 
My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 
Till that her blush made me my shame to see, 

VIL 

No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 
O give my passions leave to run their race ! 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 



Some Sonnets ot Sir iPbUtp Sis&ne^. 387 

Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 

Let me no steps, but of lost labor, trace ; 

Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,— 

But do not will me from my love to fly. 

I do not envy Aristotle's wit, 

Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame ', 

Nor aught do care, though some above me sit j 

Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame, 

But that which once may win thy cruel heart. 

Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 

viir. 

Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, ^ 

School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 

What wonder then, if he his lesson miss, 

When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 

And yet my Star, because a sugar' d kiss 

In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie. 

Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 

Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 

But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 

In beauty's throne, — see now who dares come near, i 

Those scarlet j udges, threat'ning bloody pain ? 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace. 
That anger's self I needs must kiss again ! 

IX. 

1 never drank of Aganippi well, 
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 

And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 

Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit. 

Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell. 

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 

And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 

I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 

In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please ? 

Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no. 

Or so i* — much less. How then ? sure thus it is, 

My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 



388 IBsea^s ot lEUa. 

X. 

Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name, 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain, — 
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
Not that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain. 
And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame. 
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain, 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid. 
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lion's paws. 
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause, — 
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 



XI. 

happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 
"While those fair planets on thy streams did shine 
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
"While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
Ravish 'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
They did themselves (O sweetest prison ! ) twine. 
And fain those idol's youth there would their stay 
Have made ; but forced by nature still to fly, 
First did with puffing kiss those locks display. 
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
With sight thereof cried out : O fair disgrace, 
Let honor's self to thee grant highest place 1 

xn. 

Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet. 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet. 
More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
Now Blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet, 
My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully, 



Some Sonnets ot Sir pbillp S^One^. 389 

Be you still fair, honor'd by public heed, 

By no enroachment wrong' d, nor time forgot; 

Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed . 

And that you know, I envy you no lot 

Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 

Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the 
last sonnets, are my favorites. But the general 
beauty of them all is, that they are so perfectly 
characteristical. The spirit of " learning and of 
chivalry," — of which union, Spencer has entitled 
Sydney to have been the ** president, " — shines 
through them. I confess I can see nothing of the 
''jejune " or ''frigid" in them ; much less of the 
*' stiff" and "cumbrous," — which I have some- 
times heard objected to the Arcadia. The .verse 
runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have 
been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as 
himself expresses it) to "trampling horses' feet." 
They abound in felicitous phrases, — 

O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 

Sth Sonnet. 

Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 

2d Sonnet, 

That sweet enemy — France — 

^h Sonnet. 

But they are not rich in words only, in vague 
and unlocalized feelings, — the failing too much of 
some poetry of the present day, — they are full, 
material, and circumstantiated. Tinie and place 
appropriates every one of them. It is not a fever 



390 jBbs$l^$ Of ;eHa. 

of passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty 
works, but a transcendent passion pervading and 
illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of 
arms, the opinions of contemporaries and his 
judgment of them. An historical thread runs 
through them, which almost affixes a date to 
them, marks the when and where they were 
written. 

I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive 
the merit of these poems, because I have been 
hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it by 
a gentler name) with which W. H. takes every 
occasion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip 
Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of 
Table Talk, etc. (most profound and subtle where 
they are, as for the most part, just), are more 
safely to be relied upon on subjects and authors 
he has a partiality for, than on such as he has 
conceived an accidental prejudice against. Mil- 
ton wrote Sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it 
was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a 
patriot. But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea 
from my mind. The noble images, passions, 
sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character, 
scattered all over the Arcadia, (spite of some stiff- 
ness and encumberment, ) justify to me the char- 
acter which his contemporaries have left us of the 
writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir 
Philip Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a 
foolish nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to 
term him. I call to mind the epitaph made on 
him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and 
I repose upon the beautiful lines in the " Friend's 
Passion for his Astrophel," printed with the Ele- 
gies of Spencer and others. 



Some Sonnets ot Sic Ipbdip S^Dne^. 391 

You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 

(That I should live to say I knew, 

And have not in possession still ! ) — 

Things known permit me to renew — 
Of him you know his merit such, 
I cannot say — you hear — too much. 

Within these woods of Arcady 

He chief delight and pleasure took ; 

And on the mountain Parthney, 

Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
The Muses meet him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write and say. 

When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine ; 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak and sweetly smile, 

You were in Paradise the while, 

A szveet attractive /djtd of grace ; 

A full assurance given by looks ; 

Continual comfort in a face. 

The littearnents of Gospel books — 
I trow that count'nance cannot lye. 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 



Above all others this is he. 
Which erst approved in his song. 
That love and honor might agree. 
And that pure love will do no wrong. 
Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 
To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did ever love so sweetly breathe 
In any mortal breast before : 
Did never Muse inspire beneath 
A Poet's brain with finer store. 

He wrote of Love with high conceit, 
And beauty rear'd above her height. 



392 ]6s0a^6 ot Blia. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief 
running into rage) in the poem, — the last in the 
collection accompanying the above, — which from 
internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's, 
beginning with ''Silence augmenteth grief," and 
then seriously ask himself, whether the subject of 
such absorbing and confounding regrets could 
have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed 
him. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



Dan Stuart once told us that he did not remem- 
ber that he ever deliberately walked into the Ex- 
hibition at Somerset House in his life. He might 
occasionally have escorted a party of ladies across 
the viray that vi^ere going in ; but he never went in 
of his own head. Yet the office of Jhe Morning 
Post newspaper stood then just where it does 
now, — we are carrying you back, Reader, some 
thirty years or more, — with its gilt-globe- topt 
front facing that emporium of our Artists' grand 
Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish that we 
had observed the same abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to 
us one of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, 
of Hie Morning Chronicle, was equally pleasant, 
with a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier. 
S. was frank, plain, and English all over. We 
have worked for both these gentlemen. 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the 
Ganges ; to trace the first little bubblings of a 
mighty river : 

With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence gUde the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian pilgrim's 
exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant 

393 



394 J659ai26 Of lSli$l. 

Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer 
holiday (a ''whole day's leave," we called it at 
Christ's Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not 
very well provisioned either for such an under- 
taking, to trace the current of the New River — 
Middletonian stream ! — to its scaturient source, 
as we had read, in meadows by fair Am well. 
Gallantly did we commence our solitary quest, — 
for it was essential to the dignity of a Discovery, 
that no eye of schoolboy, save our own, should 
beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and 
verdant lanes skirting Hornsey, hope trained us 
on in many a baffling turn ; endless, hopeless 
meanders, as it seemed ; or as if the jealous 
waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the hum- 
ble spot of their nativity revealed ; till spent, and 
nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we sat 
down somewhere by Bowes Farm near Totten- 
ham, with a tithe of our proposed labors only yet 
accomplished ; sorely convinced in spirit, that 
that Brucian enterprise was as yet too arduous 
for our young shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of 
the traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters 
up to their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased 
and candid reader to go back to the inexperienced 
essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of 
some established name in literature ; from the 
gnat which preluded to the ^neid, to the duck 
which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

In those days every morning paper, as an essen- 
tial retainer to its establishment, kept an author, 
who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of 
witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and it was 
thought pretty high too — was Dan Stuart's settled 



Newspapers Q:birt^*3five J^ears Bgo. 395 

remuneration in these cases. The chat of the 
day, scandal, but, above all, dress, furnished the 
material. The length of no paragraph was to 
exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but 
they must be poignant. 

A fashion of flesh, or rather />m^-colored hose 
for the ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture 
w^hen v^e w^ere on our probation for the place of 
chief jester to S 's paper, established our repu- 
tation in that line. We were pronounced a ''cap- 
ital hand." Oh, the conceits which we varied 
upon red in all its prismatic differences ! from the 
trite and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming 
costume of the lady that has her sitting upon 
** many waters." Then there was the collateral 
topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly 
chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice 
brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seem- 
ingly ever approximating something *'not quite 
proper " ; while, like a skilful posture-master, 
balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, 
he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth 
deviation is destruction ; hovering in the confines 
of light and darkness, or where ''both seem 
either"; a hazy, uncertain delicacy; Autolycus- 
like in the play, still putting off his expectant 
auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good 
man ! " But, above all, that conceit arrided us 
most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to 
remember, where, allusively to the flight of 
Astrsea — ultima Ccelestum terras redquit, — we pro- 
nounced — in reference to the stockings still — that 
Modesty, taking her final leave of mortals, her 
LAST Blush was visible in her ascent to the 
Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep. 



396 JEssags ot jBiin* 

This might be called the crowning conceit ; and 
was esteemed tolerable writing in those days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, 
passes away ; as did the transient mode which 
had so favored us. The ankles of our fair friends 
in a few weeks began to reassume their white- 
ness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. 
Other female whims followed, but none me- 
thought so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd con- 
ceits, and more than single meanings. 

Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross- 
buns daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would 
surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to fur- 
nish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fort- 
night, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were 
constrained to do, was a little harder exaction. 
*'Man goeth forth to his work until the evening,'' 
— from a reasonable hour in the morning, we pre- 
sume it was meant. Now, as our main occupa- 
tion took us up from eight till five every day in 
the city ; and as our evening hours, at that time 
of life, had generally to do with any thing rather 
than business, it follows that the only time we 
could spare for this manufactory of jokes — our 
supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in 
every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was 
exactly that part of the day which (as we have 
heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denom- 
inated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which 
a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak 
more plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an 
hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose 
occasions call him up so preposterously, has to 
wait for his breakfast. 

O those headaches at dawn of day, when at 



Newspapers ^birts*3five l^ears %qo. 397 

five or half-past five in summer, and not much 
later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to 
rise, having been perhaps not above four hours 
in bed (for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, 
though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her 
rising, — we like a parting cup at midnight, as all 
young men did before these effeminate times, and 
to have our friends about us,- — we were not con- 
stellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and 
therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, 
bloodless, — we were none of your Basilian water- 
sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount 
Ague, — we were right toping Capulets, jolly com- 
panions, we and they), — but to have to get up, 
as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, 
fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea 
in the distance, — to be necessitated to rouse our- 
selves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a 
domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleas- 
ure in her announcement that it was ''time to 
rise " ; and whose chappy knuckles we have often 
yearned to amputate, and string them up at our 
chamber-door, to be a terror to all such unseason- 
able rest-breakers in future 

**Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been 
the ''descending" of the overnight, balmy the 
first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow ; 
but to get up, as he goes on to say, 

revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras 

and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice 
prepended, — there was the "labor," there the 
''work." 
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery 



398 Bssa^a of JBlia, 

like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants 
ever turned out for half the tyranny which this 
necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests 
in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems 
nothing ! We make twice the number every day 
in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no 
Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into 
our head. But when the head has to go out to 
them — when the mountain must go to Mahomet,— 

Reader, try it for- once, only for one short 
twelvemonth. 

It was not every week that a fashion of pink 
stockings came up ; but mostly, instead of it, 
some rugged, untractable subject ; some topic 
impossible to be contorted into the risible ; some 
feature, upon which no smile could play ; some 
flint, from which no process of ingenuity could 
procure a scintillation. There they lay ; there 
your appointed tale of brick-making was set before 
you, which you must finish, with or without 
straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon, — 
f he Public, — like him in Bel's temple, — must be 
fed ; it expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, 
and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we 
could on this side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses 
for T/ie Post, and writhing under the toil of what 
is called ''easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam 
schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains 
in a like service for The Oracle. Not that Robert 
troubled himself much about wit. If his para- 
graphs had a sprightly air about them, it was 
sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so far at 
last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no 
very important one, was not seldom palmed upon 



mewspapers ^bfrt^*3ffve l^ears Bgo. 399 

his employers for a good jest ; for example sake, 
— " Walki7ig yesterday mor7img casually down Snow 
Hill, whom should we meet hut Mr. Deputy Hum- 
phreys ! We rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy 
appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do 
not^ ever remember to have seen him look better.''' 
This gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow 
Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, 
was a constant butt for mirth to the small para- 
graph-mongers of the day; and our friend thought 
that he might have his fling at him with the rest. 
We met A. in Holborn shortly after this extraor- 
dinary rencounter, which he told with tears of 
satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the antic- 
ipated effects of its announcement next day in the 
paper. ^ We did not quite comprehend where the 
wit of it lay at the time ; nor was it easy to be 
detected, when the thing came out advantaged 
by type and letter-press. He had better have 
met any thing that morning than a Common 
Councilman. His services were shortly after dis- 
pensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of 
late had been deficient in point. The one in 
question, it must be owned, had an air, in the 
opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity; 
and the sentiment, or moral, wears the aspect 
of humanity and good neighborly feeling. But 
somehow the conclusion was not judged alto- 
gether to answer to the magnificent promise of 
the premises. We traced our friend's pen after- 
wards in The True Briton, The Star, The Traveller, 
--from all which he was successively dismissed, 
the proprietors having *'no further occasion for 
his services." Nothing was easier than to detect 
him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there 



400 Bssa^s ot jBlia, 

constantly appeared the following- : — '*// ts not 
generally k^iown that the three Blue Balls at the 
Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lorn- 
hardy. The Lombards were the first money -brokers 
in Europe.'' Bob has done more to set the public 
right on this important point of blazonry, than the 
whole College of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long 
ceased to be a part of the economy of a morning- 
paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as 
well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, 
brought up the set custom of " witty paragraphs" 
first in The World. Boaden was a reigning para- 
graphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in 
The Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes 
passes away ; and it would be difficult to discover 
in the biographer of Mrs. Siddons any traces of 
that vivacity and fancy which charmed the whole 
town at the commencement of the present century. 
Even the prelusive delicacies of the present writer, 
— the curt * * Astrsean allusion " — would be thought 
pedantic and out of date in these days. 

From the office of The Morning Post (for we 
may as well exhaust our newspaper reminiscences 
at once), by change of property in the paper, we 
were transferred, mortifying exchange ! to the 
office of Tlie Albion newspaper, late Rackstrow's 
Museum, in Fleet Street. What a transition, — 
from a handsome apartment, from rosewood 
desks and silver inkstands, to an office, — no office, 
but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occu- 
pation of dead monsters, of which it seemed red- 
olent, — from the centre of loyalty and fashion, 
to a focus of vulgarity and sedition ! Here, in 
murky closet, inadequate from its square con- 



mewspapet6 ^blrts^Jipe l^ears Bgo. 401 

tents to the receipt of the two bodies of editor 
and humble paragraph-maker, together at one 
time, sat, in the discharge of his new editorial 
functions, (the ''Bigod" of Elia,) the redoubted 
John Fenwick. 

F,, without a guinea in his pocket, and having 
left not many in the pockets of his friends whom 
he might command, had purchased (on tick doubt- 
less) the whole and sole editorship, proprietorship, 
with all the rights and titles (such as they were 
worth) of The Albion from one Lovell ; of whom 
we know nothing, save that he had stood in the 
pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With 
this hopeless concern — for it had been sinking 
ever since its commencement, and could now 
reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers 
— F. resolutely determined upon pulling down 
the government in the first instance, and making 
both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven 
weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go 
about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser 
coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp- 
Office, which allowed no credit to publications of 
that side in politics. An outcast from politer 
bread, we attached our small talents to the for- 
lorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now 
was to write treason. 

Recollections of feelings, — which were all that 
now remained from our first boyish heats kindled 
by the French Revolution, when, if we were 
misled, we erred in the company of some who 
are accounted very good men now, — rather than 
any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines, 
— assisted us in assuming a style of writing, 
v/hile the paper lasted, consonant in no very 
26 



402 E06a^6 ot Blfa, 

under-tone, — to the right earnest fanaticism of 
F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than 
recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, 
Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers 
of so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, 
never naming the thing directly — that the keen 
eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to 
detect the lurking snake among them. There 
were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more 
gentlemanlike occupation under Stuart. But with 
change of masters it is ever change of service. 
Already one paragraph, and another, as we 
learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treas- 
ury, had begun to be marked at that office, with 
a view of its being submitted at least to the at- 
tention of the proper Law Officers, — when an 
unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, 

aimed at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve 

of departing for India to reap the fruits of his 
apostasy, as F. pronounced it (it is hardly worth 
particularizing), happening to offend the nice 
sense of Lord, or as he then delighted to be 
called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at once of 
the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron 
that had stuck by us ; and breaking up our estab- 
lishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mor- 
tifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was 
about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart 
made that curious confession to us, that he had 
" never deliberately walked into an Exhibition at 
Somerset House in his life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FAC- 
ULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF 
MODERN ART. 



Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one 
paniter within the last fifty years, or since the 
humor of exhibiting began, that has treated a 
story imaginatively? By this we mean, upon 
whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed 
to direct him— not to be arranged by him ? Any 
upon whom its leading or collateral points have 
impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he 
dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify 
a revelation ? Any that has imparted to his com- 
positions, not merely so much truth as is enough 
to convey a story with clearness, but that in- 
dividualizing property, which should keep the 
subject so treated distinct in feature from every 
other subject, however similar, and to common 
apprehensions almost identical; so as that we 
might say, this and this part could have found 
an appropriate place in no other picture in the 
world but this ? Is there any thing in modern 
art— we will not demand that it should be equal 
—but m any way analogous to what Titian has 
effected, in that wonderful bringing together of 
two times in the ''Ariadne," in the ^National 
Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout 

403 



404 E66ai$0 Of }EUa. 

about him, re-peopling and re-illumining sud- 
denly the waste places, drunk with a new fury 
beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in lire, fire- 
like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the 
time present. With this telling of the story — an 
artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly 
proud. Guido, in his harmonious version of it, 
saw no further. But from the depths of the 
imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, 
and laid it contributory with the present to one 
simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing 
with the mad cymbals of his followers, made 
lucid with the presence and new offers of a god, — 
as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting 
her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant, — 
her soul undistracted from Theseus, — Ariadne is 
still pacing the solitary shore in as much heart 
silence, and in almost the same local solitude, 
with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the 
forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away 
the Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co-uniting; 
fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still 
absolute ; noonday revelations, with the acci- 
dents of the dull gray dawn un quenched and 
lingering; the present Bacchus, with the past 
Ariadne ; two stories, with double Time ; sepa- 
rate and harmonizing. Had the artist made the 
woman one shade less indifferent to the god ; 
still more, had she expressed a rapture at his 
advent, where would have been the story of the 
mighty desolation of the heart previous .'' merged 
in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with 
a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for 
Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a god. 



©n tbe proDuctions of ^o5ern Bet 405 

We have before us a fine rough print, from 
a picture by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the 
Presentation of the new-born Eve to Adam by the 
Almighty. A fairer mother of mankind we might 
imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men since 
born. But these are matters subordinate to the 
conception of the situation^ displayed in this ex- 
traordinary production, A tolerably modern artist 
would have been satisfied with tempering certain 
raptures of connubial anticipation, with a suitable 
acknowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in 
the countenance of the first bridegroom, some- 
thing like the divided attention of the child (Adam 
was here a child-man) between the given toy and 
the mother who had just blessed it with the bauble. 
This is the obvious, the first-sight view, the super- 
ficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering 
the awful presence they were in, would have 
taken care to subtract something from the expres- 
sion of the more human passion, and to heighten 
the more spiritual one. This would be as much 
as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somer- 
set House to last year's show, has been en- 
couraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a 
lower expression yet, in a picture that, for respects 
of drawing and coloring, might be deemed not 
wholly inadmissible within these art-fostering 
walls in which the raptures should be as ninety- 
nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero ! By 
neither the one passion nor the other has Raphael 
expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon 
his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the 
created miracle. The moment is seized by the 
intuitive artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his 
art, in which neither of the conflicting emotions 



4o6 iBBsa^s Of J6Ifa» 

— a moment how abstracted! — has had time to 
spring up, or to battle for indecorous mastery. 
We have seen a landscape of a justly admired 
neoteric, in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, 
one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity — 

the gardens of the Hesperides, To do Mr. • 

justice, he had painted a laudable orchard, with 
fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of which 
a Polypheme by Poussin is somehow ci/lic simile 
for the situation), looking over into the world shut 
out backward, so that none but a *' still-climbing 
Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the 
admired Ternary of Recluses. No conventual 
porter could keep his eyes better than this custos 
with the " lidless eyes." He not only sees that 
none do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear as 
daylight, that none but He?'cules aut Diaholiis by 
any manner of means can. So far all is well. We 
have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ah extra 
the damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's 
courage seems to have failed him. He began to 
pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the irk- 
someness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy 
of fair attendants, maids of honor, or ladies of the 
bedchamber, according to the approved etiquette 
at a court of the nineteenth century ; giving to 
the whole scene the air of ?ifete champeire, if we 
will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. 
This is well, and Watteauish. But what is become 
of the solitary mystery, — the 

Daughters three, 
That smg around the golden tree .'* 

This is not the way in which Poussin would have 
tr-eated the subject. 



®n the l^roOuctions of jfflboDern Btt» 407 

The paintings, or rather the stupendous archi- 
tectural designs, of a modern artist, have been 
urged as objections to the theory of our motto. 
They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it. 
His towered structures are of the highest order of 
the material sublime. Whether they were dreams, 
or transcripts of some elder workmanship, — As- 
syrian ruins old, — restored by this mighty artist, 
they satisfy our most stretched and craving con- 
ceptions of the glories of the antique world. It is 
a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, 
the imagination of the artist halts, and appears 
defective. Let us examine the point of the story 
in the " Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce 
it by an apposite anecdote. 

The court historians of the day record, that at 
the first dinner given by the late King (then Prince 
Regent) at the Pavilion, the following character- 
istic frolic was played off. The guests were select 
and admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; 
the lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was 
perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among 
which the great gold saltcellar, brought from the 
regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose, itself 
a tower ! stood conspicuous for its magnitude. 

And now the Rev. , the then admired court 

chaplain, was proceeding with the grace, when, 
at a signal given, the lights were suddenly over- 
cast, and a huge transparency was discovered in 
which glittered in gold letters — 

*' Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up-alive ! " 

Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges 
and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the 
occasion ! The fans dropped, and picked up the 



4o8 35603^3 Of iBUn. 

next morning by the sly court pages ! Mr& 
Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess 
of holding the smelling-bottle, till the good- 
humored Prince caused harmony to be restored, 
by calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the 
whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got 
up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, 
from hints which his Royal Highness himself had 
furnished ! Then imagine the infinite applause 
that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declara- 
tions that "they were not much frightened," of 
the assembled galaxy. 

The point of time in the picture exactly answers ' 
to the appearance of the transparency in the anec- 
dote. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the 
escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm ; the pret- 
tinesses heightened by consternation ; the cour- 
tier's fear, which was flattery ; and the lady's, 
which was affectation ; all that we may conceive 
to have taken place in a mob of Brighton cour- 
tiers, sympathizing with the well-acted surprise 
of their sovereign ; all this, and no more, is 
exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in 
the hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation 
we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild 
geese at the report only of a gun having gone 
off! 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal 
anxiety for the preservation of this persons, — 
such as we have witnessed at a theatre, when a 
slight alarm of fire has been given, — an adequate 
exponement of a supernatural terror? the way in 
which the finger of God, writing judgments, 
would have been met by the withered conscience ? 
There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The 



®n tbe ipro&uctfone ot /Bbo^ern Brt. 409 

one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. 
The other is bowed down, effortless, passive. 
When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the 
visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood 
up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring 
the bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants ? 
But let us see in the text what there is to justify 
all this huddle of vulgar consternation. 

From the words of Daniel it appears that Bel- 
shazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of 
his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. 
The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enu- 
merated, with the princes, the king's concubines, 
and his wives. Then follows, — 

*' In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick 
upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace 
and the kmg saw the part of the hand that wrote. 
Then the king's countenance was changed, and 
his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of 
his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one 
against another." 

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be 
otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was 
solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his 
single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken 
of its being seen by any else there present, not 
even by the queen herself, who merely undertakes 
for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as re- 
lated to her, doubtless, by her husband. The 
lords are simply said to be astonished; i e., at 
the trouble and the change of countenance in 
their sovereign. Even the prophet does not ap- 
pear to have seen the scroll, which the King saw. 
He recalls it only, as Joseph did the dream to the 



41 o B66ai26 ot Blia, 

King of Egypt. ** Then was the part of the hand 
sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was 
written." He speaks of the phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless multipli- 
cation of the miracle.? this message to a royal 
conscience, singly expressed, — for it was said, 
"Thy kingdom is divided," — simultaneously im- 
pressed upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, 
who were implied in it neither directly nor gram- 
matically ? 

But admitting the artist's own version of the 
story, and that the sight was seen also by the 
thousand courtiers, — let it have been visible to all 
Babylon, — as the knees of Belshazzar were shaken, 
and his countenance troubled, even so would the 
knees of every man in Babylon, and their coun- 
tenances, as of an individual man, have been 
troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would they have 
remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of strug- 
gling with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is 
to be shown in every picture. The eye delight- 
edly dwells upon the brilliant individualities in a 
** Marriage at Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to 
the very texture and color of the wedding-gar- 
ments, the ring glittering upon the bride's finger, 
the metal and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at 
such seasons there is leisure and luxury to be 
curious. But in a "day of judgment," or in a 
"day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the im- 
pious feast of Belshazzar, the eye should see, as 
the actual eye of an agent or patient in the imme- 
diate scene would see, only in masses and indis- 
tinction. Not only the female attire and jewelry 
exposed to the critical eye of fashion, as minutely 



On tbe |proC>uction0 ot ^oDetn Brt» 411 

as the dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the criti- 
cised picture, — but perhaps the curiosities of ana- 
tomical science, and studied diversities of posture, 
in the falling angels and sinners of Michael Angelo, 
— have no business in their great subjects. There 
was no leisure for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters of 
painting got at their true conclusions ; by not 
showing the actual appearances, that is, all that 
was to be seen at any given moment by an in- 
different eye, but only what the eye might be 
supposed to see in the doing or suffering of some 
portentous action. Suppose the moment of the 
swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to 
be seen, — houses, columns, architectural propor- 
tions, differences of public and private buildings, 
men and women at their standing occupations, 
the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, 
dresses in some confusion truly, but physically 
they were visible. But what eye saw them at 
that eclipsing moment, which reduces confusion 
to a kind of unity, and when the senses are up- 
turned from their properties, when sight and hear- 
ing are a feeling only } A thousand years have 
passed, and we are at leisure to contemplate the 
weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at 
his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian cool- 
ness the pots and pans of Pompeii. 

"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou. 
Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. " Who, in reading 
this magnificent Hebraism, in his conception, sees 
aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the out- 
stretched arm, and the greater and lesser light 
obsequious } Doubtless there were to be seen hill 
and dale, and chariots and horsemen on open 



412 iBem^s of Blla. 

plain, or winding by secret defiles, and all the 
circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose 
eyes would have been conscious of this array at 
the interposition of this synchronic miracle ? Yet 
in the picture of this subject by the artist of the 
Belshazzar's Feast — no ignoble work either — the 
marshalling and landscape of the war is everything, 
the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the day ; and 
the eye may * ' dart through rank and file traverse " 
for some minutes, before it shall discover among 
his armed followers which is Joshua ! Not modern 
art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found 
if anywhere, can be detected erring, from defect of 
this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing 
to show of the preternatural painting, transcending 
the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in 
the great picture at Angerntein's. It seems a thing 
between two beings. A ghastly horror at itself 
struggles with newly apprehended gratitude at 
second life bestowed. It cannot forget that it was 
a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a body. It 
has to tell of the world of spirits. Was it from a 
feeling that the crowd of half-impassioned by- 
standers, and the still more irrelevant herd of 
passers-by at a distance, who have not heard, or 
but faintly have been told, of the passing miracle, 
admirable as they are in design and hue — for it is 
a glorified work — do not respond adequately to 
the action — that the single figure of the Lazarus 
has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the 
mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of 
the greater half of the interest ! Now that there 
were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope 
of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to 
whom the sound of it had but faintly, or not at 



On tbe iC>roDuction0 ot /iRoDern Hrt. 413 

all, reached, it would be hardihood to deny ; but 
would they see tbem? or can the mind in the 
conception of it admit of such unconcerning- 
objects; can it think of them at all? or what 
associating league to the imagination can there 
be between the seers and the seers not of a pre- 
sential miracle. 

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture 
of a Dryad, we will ask whether,- in the present 
low state of expectation, the patron would not, or 
ought not to be fully satisfied with a beautiful 
naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched 
oaks ? Disseat those woods, and place the same 
figure among fountains, and fall of pellucid water, 
and you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a rough print 
we have seen after Julio Romano, we think, for it 
is long since. Tliere, by no process, with mere 
change of scene, could the figure have recipro- 
cated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet 
with a grace of her own, beautiful in convolution 
and distortion, linked to her connatural tree, co- 
twisting with its limbs her own, till both seemed 
either — these, animated branches ; these, disani- 
mated members — yet the animal and vegetable 
lives kept distinct, — his Dryad lay, an approxima- 
tion of two natures, which to conceive it must be 
seen ; analogous to, not the same with, the deli- 
cacies of Ovidian transformations. 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial 
comprehension, the most barren, the great 
masters give loftiness and fruitfulness. The large 
eye of genius saw in the meanness of present 
objects their capabilities of treatment from their 
relations to some grand Past or Future. How has 
Raphael — we must still lins:er about the Vatican 



414 JE06ai53 of Blia. 

— treated the humble craft of the ship-builder in 
his Building of the Ark ? It is in that scriptural 
series, to which we have referred, and which, 
judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches 
of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher 
and more poetic grade than even the cartoons. 
The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. 
There is a cowardice in modern art. As the 
Frenchman, of whom Coleridge's friend made the 
prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns 
of the Moses of Michael Angelo, collected no in- 
ferences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; 
so from this subject, of mere mechanic promise, 
it would instinctively turn away, as from one 
incapable of investiture with any grandeur. The 
dock-yards at Woolwich would object derogatory 
associations. The depot at Chatham would be the 
mote and the beam in an intellectual eye. But 
not to the nautical preparations in the ship-yards 
of Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, 
when he imagined the Building of the Vessel that 
was to be conservatory of the wrecks of the species 
of drowned mankind. In the intensity of the 
action, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of 
the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm 
forethought, and with holy prescience, giving 
directions. And there are his agents— the solitary 
but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, every one 
with the might and earnestness of a Demiurgus ; 
under some instinctive rather than technical guid- 
ance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, or 
liker to those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding 
caverns under Mongibello w^rought in fire, — 
Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So 
work the workmen that should repair a world ! 



On the ©reductions of /Ifto^em Brt. 415 

Artists again err in the confounding oi poetic 
with pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior 
accidents are nearly every thing, the unseen 
qualities as nothing. Othello's color, — the infirm- 
ities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff, — do 
they haunt us perpetually in the reading ? or are 
they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for 
ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the 
respective moral or intellectual attributes of the 
character ? But in a picture Othello is always a 
Blackamoor ; and the other only Plump Jack. 
Deeply corporealized, and enchained hopelessly 
in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be 
the mind, to which, in its better moments, the 
image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quix- 
ote — the errant Star of Knighthood, made more 
tender by eclipse — has never presented itself, 
divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of 
a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosi- 
nante. That man has read his book by halves ; 
he has laughed, mistaking his author's purport, 
which was — tears. The artist that pictures Quix- 
ote (and it is in this degrading point that he is 
every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the 
shallow hope of exciting mirth, would have joined 
the rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We 
wish not to see that counterfeited, which we 
would not have w^ished to see in the reality. 
Conscious of the heroic inside of the noble Quix- 
ote, who, on hearing that his withered person 
was passing, would have stepped over his thresh- 
old to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and 
the '^ strange bedfellows which misery brings a 
man acquainted with " ? Shade of Cervantes ! 
who in thy Second Part could put into the mouth 



4i6 ^Esea^s ot Blla, 

of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super- 
chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of 
the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would 
spoil their pretty networks, and, inviting him to 
be a guest with them, in accents like these : 
* ' Truly, fairest Lady, Actaeon was not more 
astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at 
the fountain, than I have been in beholding your 
beauty. 1 commend the manner of your pastime, 
and thank you for your kind offers ; and, if I may 
serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, 
yoju may command me ; for my profession is this, 
to show myself thankful, and a doer of good to 
all sorts of people, especially of the rank that 
your person shows you to be ; and if those nets, 
as they take up but a little piece of ground, 
should take up the whole world, I would seek out 
new worlds to pass through, rather than break 
them ; and (he adds) that you may give credit to 
this my exaggeration, behold at least he that 
promiseth you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, 
if haply this name hath come to your hearing." 
Illustrious Romancer! were the " fine frenzies" 
which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, 
a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed 
to the duennas and serving-men ? to be mon- 
stered and shown up at the heartless banquets of 
great men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in 
thy First Part misleads him, always from within^ 
into half-ludicrous, but more than half-compas- 
sionable and admirable errors, not infliction t 
enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices 
must devise and practise upon the humor, to 
inflame where they should soothe it.? Why, 
Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the 



®n tbe iPcoDuctions 6t ^oDern Brt. 417 

abdicated king at this rate, and the she-wolf 
Regan not have endured to play the pranks upon 
his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote 
suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands of that 
unworthy nobleman.* 

In the ''First Adventures," even, it needed all 
the art of the most consummate artist in the book 
way that the world hath yet seen, to keep up in 
the mind of the reader the heroic attributes of the 
character without relaxing ; so as absolutely that 
they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellow- 
ship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as 
a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or not, 
rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? Cervantes, 
stung, perchance, by the relish with which hzs 
Reading Public had received the fooleries of the 
man, more to their palates than the generosities 
of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, 
lost the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed 
a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. 
We know that in the present day the Knight has 
fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipating, 
what did actually happen to him, — as afterwards 
it did to his scarce inferior follower, the Author 
of "Guzman de Alfarache," — that some less 
knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious 
Second Part, and judging that it would be easier 
for his competitor to outbid him in the comical- 
ities, than in the romance, of his work, he aban- 
doned his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire 
for his hero. For what else has he unsealed the 
eyes of Sancho ? and instead of that twilight state 
of semi-insanity — the madness at second-hand — 

* Yet from this Second Part our cried-up pictures are mostly 
selected ; the waiting-women with beards, etc. 
27 



41 8 JEssass ot BWa, 

the contagion, caught from a stronger mind 
infected — that war between native cunning and 
hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto 
accompanied his master, — two for a pair almost, 
— does he substitute a downright Knave, with 
open eyes, for his own ends only following a con- 
fessed Madman ; and offering at one time to lay, 
if not actually laying hands upon him ! From 
the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don 
Quixote is become — a treatable lunatic. Our 
artists handle him accordingly. 



THE WEDDING. 



I DO not know when I have been better pleased 
than at bemg invited last week to be present at 
the wedding of a friend's daughter. 1 like to make 
one at these ceremonies, which to us old people 
give back our youth in a manner, and restore our 
gayest season, in the remembrance of our own 
success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our 
own youthful disappointments, in this point of a 
settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be 
in good humor for a week or two after, and enjoy 
a reflected honeymoon. Being without a faniily, 
I am flattered with these temporary adoptions 
into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, 
or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted 
into degrees of affinity ; and in the participated 
socialities of the little community, I lay down for 
a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I carry 
this humor so far that I take it unkindly to be left 
out, even when a funeral is going on in the house 
of a dear friend. But to my subject. 

The union itself had been long settled, but its 
celebration had been hitherto deferred to an al- 
most unreasonable state of suspense in the lovers 
by some invincible prejudices which the bride's 
father had unhappily contracted upon the sub- 
ject of the too early marriages of females. He 

419 



420 iSBsn^e ot jBlin, 

has been lecturing any time these five years — for 
to that length the courtship has been protracted — • 
upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity till 
the lady should have completed her five and 
twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a 
suit which as yet had abated of none of its ardors, 
might at last be lingered on till passion had time 
to cool, and love go out in the experiment. 
But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, who 
was by no means a party to these overstrained 
notions, joined to some serious expostulations on 
that of his friends, who, from the growing infirm- 
ities of the old gentleman, could not promise our- 
selves many years' enjoyment of his company, 
and were anxious to bring matters to a conclusion 
during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and on 
Monday last the daughter of my old friend. 

Admiral , having attained the woma?t/y age 

of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her 

pleasant cousin J , who told some few years 

older. 

Before the youthful part of my female readers ex- 
press their indignation at the abominable loss of 
time occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous 
notions of my old friend, they will do well to consid- 
er the reluctance which a fond parent naturally feels 
at parting with his child. To this unwillingness, 
I believe, in most cases may be traced the differ- 
ence of opinion on this point between child and 
parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence 
may be held out to cover it. The hardheartedness 
of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a 
sure and moving topic ; but is there not something 
untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which 
a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself 



XLhc MeDDing. 421 

from the paternal stock, and commit herself to 
strange graftings ? The case is heightened where 
the lady, as in the present instance, happens to be 
an only child. I do not understand these matters 
experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at 
the wounded pride of a parent upon these occa- 
sions. It is no new observation, I believe, that a 
lover in most cases has no rival so much to be 
feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy 
in unparallel subjects, which is little less heart- 
rending than the passion which we more strictly 
christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are more 
easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that 
the protection transferred to a husband is less a 
derogation and a loss to their authority than to 
the paternal. Mothers, besides, have a trembling 
foresight, which paints the inconveniences (impos- 
sible to be conceived in the same degree by the 
other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which 
the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon 
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here 
than the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. 
To this instinct may be imputed, and by it alone 
may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by 
which some wives push on the matrimonial projects 
of their daughters, which the husband, however 
approving, shall entertain with comparative in- 
difference. A little shamelessness on this head is 
pardonablie. With this explanation, forwardness 
becomes a grace, and maternal importunity 
receives the name of a virtue. But the parson 
stays, while I preposterously assume his office ; 
I am preaching, while the bride is on the thresh- 
old. 

Nor let any of my female readers suppose that 



422 B60a^6 of J6Ua. 

the sage reflections which have just escaped me 
have the obliquest tendency of application to the 
young lady who, it will be seen, is about to ven- 
ture upon a change in her condition, at a mature 
and competent age, and not without the fullest 
approbation of all parties. I only deprecate very 
hasty marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be 
gone through at an early hour, to give time for a 
little dejeune afterwards, to which a select party 
of friends had been invited. We were in church a 
little before the clock struck eight. 

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than 
the dress of the bridesmaids — the three charming 
Miss Foresters — on this morning. To give the 
bride an opportunity of shining singly, they had 
come habited all in green. I am ill at describ- 
ing female apparel ; but while she stood at the 
altar in vestments white and candid as her 
thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in 
robes such as might become Diana's nymphs, — 
Foresters indeed, — as such who had not yet come 
to the resolution of putting off cold virginity. 
These young maids, not being so blest as to have 
a mother living, I am told, keep single for their 
father's sake, and live altogether so happy with 
their remaining parent, that the hearts of their 
lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so in- 
auspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted 
and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls ! 
Such a victim worthy of Iphigenia ! 

I do not know what business I have to be pres- 
ent in solemn places. I cannot divest me of an 
unseasonable disposition to levity upon the most 
awful occasion. I was never cut for a public 



tTbe IKHc&JXnQ. 423 

functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken 
hands ; but I could not resist the importunities of 
the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily 
confined him at home, to act as parent on this 
occasion, and give away the bride. Something 
ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of 
ail moments, — a sense of my unfitness to have 
the disposal, even in imagination, of the sweet 
young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed 
to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson 
— and the rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the 
Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in 
an instant, souring my incipient jest to thetristul 
severities of a funeral. 

This was the only misbehavior which I can plead 
to upon this solemn occasion, unless what was 
objected to me after the ceremony, by one of the 

handsome Miss T s, be accounted a solecism. 

She was pleased to say that she had never seen a 
gentleman before me give away a bride, in black. 
Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long 
— indeed I take it to be the proper costume of an 
author — the state sanctions it, — that to have 
appeared in some lighter color would have raised 
more mirth at my expense, than the anomaly had 
created censure. But I could perceive that the 
bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present 
(God bless them !) would have been well content 
if I had come in any other color than that But 
I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I 
remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, 
of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wed- 
ding, at which when all the rest came in their gay- 
est feathers, the raven alone apologized for his 
cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably 



424 iBssa^B ot iBlia, 

reconciled the elders, Eut with the young people 
all was merriment, shaking of hands and con- 
gratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, 
and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, 
who assumed some experience in these matters, 
having worn the nuptial bands some four or five 
weeks longer than her friend, rescued her, archly 
observing, with half an eye upon the bridegroom, 
that at this rate she would have "none left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and 
buckle on this occasion — a striking contrast to his 
usual neglect of personal appearance. He did 
not once shove up his borrowed locks (his custom 
ever at his morning studies) to betray the few gray 
stragglers't)f his own beneath them. He wore an 
aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for 
the hour, which at length approached, when after 
a protracted break/as/ of three hours — if stores of 
cold fowl, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruit, 
wines, cordials, etc,, can deserve so meagre an 
appellation — the coach was announced, which was 
come to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a 
season, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the 
country ; upon which design, wishing them a 
felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled 
guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next, 

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, 
when the chief performers in the morning's page- 
ant had vanished. None told his tale. None sipped 
her glass. The poor Admiral made an effort, — it 
was not much. I had anticipated so far. Even 
the infinity of full satisfaction, that had betrayed 



Zbc mct)t>inQ» 425 

itself through the prim looks and quiet deportment 
of his lady, began to wane into something of mis- 
giving. No one knew whether to take their leaves 
or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occa- 
sion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and depart- 
ure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine, 
which had otherwise like to have brought me 
into disgrace in the forepart of the day ; I mean a 
power, in my emergency, of thinking and giving 
vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In this 
awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I rattled 
off some of my most excellent absurdities. All 
were willing to be relieved, at any expense of 
reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum 
which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By 
this means I was fortunate in keeping together the 
better part of the company to a late hour ; and a 
rubber of whist (the Admiral's favorite game) with 
some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which 
came opportunely on his side, — lengthened out 
till midnight, — dismissed the old gentleman at last 
to his bed with comparatively easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various times 
since. I do not know a visiting place where 
every guest is so perfectly at his ease ; nowhere, 
where harmony is so strangely the result of confu- 
sion. Everybody is at cross-purposes, yet the 
effect is so much better than uniformity. Contra- 
dictory orders ; servants pulling one way ; master 
and mistress driving some other, yet both diverse ; 
visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsym- 
metrized ; candles disposed by chance ; meals at 
odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter 
preceding the former ; the host and the guest 
conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each 



426 J606a^6 ot iBlia. 

understanding himself, neither trying to under- 
stand nor hear the other ; draughts and poHtics, 
chess and political economy, cards and conversa- 
tion on nautical matters, going on at once, without 
the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguishing 
them, make it altogether the most perfect concor- 
dia discors you shall meet with. Yet somehow 
the old house is not quite what it should be. The 
Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss 
Emily to fill it for him. The instrument stands 
where it stood, but she is gone whose delicate 
touch could sometimes for a short minute appease 
the warring elements. He has learned, as Marvel 
expresses it, to "make his destiny his choice." 
He bears bravely up, but he does not come out 
with his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly. 
His sea songs seldom escape him. His wife, 
too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to 
scold and set to rights. We all miss a junior pres- 
ence. It is wonderful how one young maiden 
freshens up, and keeps green, the paternal roof. 
Old and young seem to have an interest in her, 
so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The 
youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is 
married. 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S 
COMING OF AGE. 



The Old Year being dead, and the New Year 
coming of age, which he does, by Calendar Law 
as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's 
body, nothing would serve the young spark but 
he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to 
which all the Days in the year were invited. The 
Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were 
mightily taken with the notion. They had been 
engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing 
mirth and good cheer for mortals below : and it 
was time they should have a taste of their own 
bounty. It was stiffly debated among them 
whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some 
said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, 
with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends 
of the meeting. But the objection was overruled 
by Christmas-Day , who had a design upon Ash- 
Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a mighty de- 
sire to see how the old Dominie would behave 
himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were re- 
quested to come with their lanterns, to light the 
gentlefolks home at night. 

All the Days came to their day. Covers were 
provided for three hundred and sixty-five guests 
at the principal table; with an occasional knife 

427 



428 Bs6ai26 of Blfa. 

and fork at the sideboard for the Tiventy -ninth of 
February. 

I should have told you that cards of invitation 
had been issued. The carriers were the Hours ; 
twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you 
should desire to see, that went all round, and 
found out the persons invited well enough, with 
the exception of Easter-day, Shrove-Tuesday , and 
a few such Movables, who had lately shifted their 
quarters. 

Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, 
all sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. 
There was nothing but, Hail ! fellow Day, — well 
met, — brother Day — sister Day — only Lady-Day 
kept a little on the aloof and seemed somewhat 
scornful. Yet some said Twelfth-Day cut her out 
and out, for she came out in a tiffany suit, white 
and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, 
glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, some 
in green, some in white, — but old Lent and his 
family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy 
Days came in, dripping ; and sunshiny Days 
helped them to change their stockings. Wedding 
Day was there in his marriage finery, a little 
the worse for wear. Pay-Day came late, as he 
always does ; and Doomsday sent word — he might 
be expected. 

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon 
himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he 
made with it. It would have posed old Erra 
Pater to have found out any given Day in the 
year, to erect a scheme upon — good Days, bad 
'Days, were so shuffled together, to the confound- 
hig of all sober horoscopy. 

He had stuck the Twenty-first offune next to 



Uhc IRew gear's Coming of Bge. 429 

the Twenty -second of December, and the former 
looked Hke a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. 
Ash- Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) 
betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. 
Lord ! how he laid about him ! Nothing but 
barons of beef and turkeys would go down with 
him, — to the great greasing and detriment of his 
new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas- 
Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail- 
bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd and protested 
there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it 
to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, cen- 
sorious hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish 
for a gentleman. Then he dipped his fist into the 
middle of the great custard that stood before his 
left-hand neighbor, and daubed his hungry beard all 
over with it, till you would have taken him for 
the Last Day in December, it so hung in icicles. 

At another part of the table Shrove-Tuesday was 
helping the Second of September to some cock 
broth, — which courtesy the latter returned with 
the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant, — so there 
was no love lost for that matter. The Last of 
Lent was sponging upon Shrovetide' s pancakes, 
which ^/)rz7 Fool perceiving, told him he did well, 
for pancakes were proper to a good fry-day. 

In another part a hubbub arose about the 
Thirtieth of January, who, it seems, being a sour 
puritanic character, that thought nobody's meat 
good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled 
mto the room a calf's head, which he had cooked 
at home for that purpose, thinking to feast thereon 
incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish March 
Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, and sub- 
ject to the megrims, screamed out there was a 



430 Sssags ot Blfa. 

** human head in the platter," and raved about 
Herodias' daughter to that degree that the obnox- 
ious viand was obliged to be removed ; nor did 
she recover her stomach till she had gulped down 
a Restorative, confected of Oak Apple, which the 
merry Twenty-ninth of May always carries about 
with him for that purpose. 

The King's health * being called for after this, 
a notable dispute arose between the Twelfth of 
August (a zealous old Whig gentlewoman) and 
the Twenty-third of April (a new-fangled lady of 
the Tory stamp), as to which of them should have 
the honor to propose it. August grew hot upon 
the matter, affirming time out of mind the prescrip- 
tive right to have lain with her, till her rival had 
basely supplanted her ; whom she represented as 
little better than a kept mistress, who went about 
in fine clothes, while she (the legitimate Birthday) 
had scarcely a rag, etc. 

April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the 
right in the strongest form of words to the appel- 
lant, but decided for peace's sake that the exercise 
of it should remain with the present possessor. 
At the same time he slyly rounded the first lady in 
the ear, that an action might lie against the Crown 
for hi-geny. 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas 
lustily bawled out for lights, which was opposed 
by all the Days, who protested against burning 
daylight. Then fair water was handed round in 
silver ewers, and the same lady was observed to 
take an unusual time in Washing herself. 

May-day, with that sweetness which is pecul- 
iar to her, in a neat speech proposing the health 

* King George IV. 



Zf)c flew l^ear's Comfng ot Bqc. 431 

of the founder, crowned her goblet (and by her 
example the rest of the company) with garlands. 
This being done, the lordly A^ew Fear from the 
upper end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat 
lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an 
occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's 
late tenants, promised to improve their farms, 
and at the same time to abate (if any thing was 
found unreasonable) in their rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days 
involuntarily looked at each other, and smiled ; 
April /bo/ whispered to an old tune of " new 
Brooms " ; and a surly old rebel at the farther 
end of the table (who was discovered to be no 
other than the Fifth of November) muttered out, 
distinctly enough to be heard by the whole com- 
pany, words to this effect, that * ' when the old 
one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." 
Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unan- 
imously voted his expulsion ; and the male-con- 
tent was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, 
as the properest place for such a boutefeu and 
firebrand as he had shown himself to be. 

Order being restored, the young lord (who, to 
say truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside 
his oratory) in a few and yet as obliging words 
as possible, assured them of entire welcome ; and 
with a graceful turn, singling out poor old Twenty- 
ninth of February, that had sat all the while 
mum-chance at the sideboard, begged to couple 
his health with that of the good company before 
him, which he drank accordingly, observing that 
he had not seen his honest face at any time these 
four years, with a number of endearing expressions 
besides. At the same time, removing the solitary 



432 Bssa^s ot ;6Ua. 

Day from the forlorn seat which had been assigned 
him, he stationed him at his own board, some- 
where between the Greek Calends and Latter Larn- 
mas. 

Ash- Wednesday being now called upon for a 
song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and 
as well as the Canary he had swallowed would 
give him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christ- 
mas-Day had taught him for the nonce ; and was 
followed by the latter, who gave " Miserere " in 
line style, hitting off the mumping notes and 
lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite 
humor. April Fool swore they had exchanged 
conditions ; but Good-Friday was observed to 
look extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan 
before her face, that she might not be seen to smile. 

Shrovetide, Lord Mayor s Day, and April Fool, 
next joined in a glee — • 

Which is the properest day to drink ? 

in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry 
burden. 

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. 
The question being proposed, who had the great- 
est number of followers, the Quarter Days said 
there could be no question as to that, for they 
had all the creditors in the world dogging their 
heels. But April Fool g^.Ye it in favor of the Forty 
Days be/ore Easter ; because the debtors in all 
cases outnumber the creditors, and they kept lent 
all the year. 

All this while Valentine's Day kept courting 
pretty May who sat next to him, slipping amorous 
billets-doux under the table, till the Dog-Day s (who 
are naturally of a warm constitution) began to be 



Zbc flew l^eat'g Coming of Bge, 433 

Jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. April 
Fool, who likes a bit of sport above measure, and 
had some pretensions to the lady besides, as being 
but a cousin once removed, clapped and halloo'd 
them on ; and as fast as their indignation cooled, 
those mad wags, the Ember Days, were at it with 
their bellows, to blow it into a flame ; and all was 
in a ferment, till old Madam Septuagesima (who 
boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely di- 
verted the conversation with a tedious tale of the 
lovers which she could reckon when she was 
young, and of one Master Rogation Day in par- 
ticular, who was forever putting the question to 
her ; but she kept him at a distance, as the chron- 
icle would tell, — by which I apprehend she meant 
the Almanac. Then she rambled on to the Days 
that were gone, the good old Days, and so to the 
Days be/ore the Flood, which plainly showed her 
old head to be little better than crazed and doited. 
Day being ended, the Days, called for their 
cloaks and great-coats, and took their leaves. 
Lord Mayor's Day went off in a Mist, as usual ; 
Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that wrapped 
the little gentleman all round like a hedgehog. 
Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in heaven — 
saw Christmas-Day safe home ; they had been 
used to the business before. Another Vigil — a 
stout, sturdy patrol, called i\iQ Eve 0/ St. Chris- 
topher — seeing yls/z- Wednesday in a condition little 
better than he should be, e'en whipped him over 
his shoulders, pick-a-pack fashion, and Old Morti- 
fication went floating home singing — 

On the bat's back do I fly, 

and a number of old snatches besides, between 
2^ 



434 JSeen^s ot BUa. 

drunk and sober ; but very few Aves or Penitenti- 
aries (you may believe me) were among them. 
Longest Day set off westward in beautiful crimson 
and gold, — the rest, some in one fashion, some in 
another ; but Valeiitine and pretty May took their 
departure together in one of the prettiest silvery 
twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in. 



OLD CHINA. 



I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old 
china. When I go to see any great house, I in- 
quire for the china-closet, and next for the picture- 
gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, 
but by saying, that we have all some taste or 
other, of too ancient a date to admit of our re- 
membering distinctly that it was an a£g^uir.^d one. 
I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhi- 
bition, that I was taken to ; but I am not con- 
scious of a time when china jars and saucers were 
introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance^ then — why should I now 
have ? — to those little, lawless, azure-tiiictured 
g-rotesques that, under the notion of men and 
wohien, float about, uncircumscribed by any ele- 
ment, in that world before pejs^ctive — a china 
teacup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance 
cannot diminish — figuring up in the air (so they 
appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still, — for 
so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of 
deeper blue, — which the decorous artist, to pre- 
vent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath 
their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the 
women, if possible, with still more womanish 
expressions. 

435 



436 Bssa^s of JElla, 

Here is a young- and courtly Mandarin, hand- 
ing- tea to a lady from a salver, two miles off. 
See how distance seems to set off respect ! And 
here the same lady,, or another — for likeness is 
identity on teacups — is stepping into a little fairy 
boat, moored on the hither side of this calm gar- 
den river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a 
right angle of incidence (as angles go in our 
world) must iiifallibly land her in the midst of a 
flowery mead-^a'^furlohg off on the other side of 
the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far and near can be predicated 
of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas^ danc- 
ing the hays. 

Here— a cow and rabbit couchant, and coex- 
tensive—so objects show, seen through the lucid 
atmosphere of fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, 
over our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned 
enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon), 
some of these speciosa viiracula upon a set of ex- 
traordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) 
which we were now for the first time using ; and 
could not help remarking, how favorable circum- 
stances had been to us of late years, that we could 
afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of 
this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to 
overshade the brows of my companion. I am 
quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. 

"I wish the good old times would come again," 
she said, '' when we were not quite so rich. I do 
not mean that I want to be poor ; but there was 
a middle state" — so she was pleased to ramble 
on — ''in which I am sure we were a great deal 
happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that 



©ID Cbina* 437 

3'-ou have money enough and to spare. Formerly 
it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxury (and, oh, how much ado I had to 
get you to consent in those times !) — we were 
used to have a debate two or three days before, 
and to weigh the/or and against^ and think what 
we might spare it out of, and what saving we 
could hit upon that should be an equivalent. A 
thing was worth buying then when we felt the 
money that we paid for it. 

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you 
made to hang upon you till all your friends cried 
shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all 
because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, 
which you dragged home late at night from 
Barker's in Covent Garden ? Do you remember 
how we eyed it for weeks before we could make 
up our minds to the purchase, and had not come 
to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of 
the Saturday night, when you set off from Isling- 
ton, fearing you should be too late, — and when 
the old bookseller with some grumbling opened 
his shop, and by the twinkling taper, (for he was 
setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his 
dusty treasures, — and when you lugged it home, 
wishing it were twice as cumbersome, — and when 
you presented it to me, — and when we were ex- 
ploring the perfectness of it {collaiing you called 
it), and while I was repairing some of the loose 
leaves with paste, which your impatience would 
not suffer to be left till daybreak, — was there 
no pleasure in being a poor man .? or can those 
neat black clothes which you wear now, and are 
so careful to keep brushed, since we have become 
rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity. 



438 36653126 Ot Blia, 

with which you flaunted it about in that overworn 
suit — your old corbeau — for four or five weeks 
longer than you should have done, to pacify your 
conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or six- 
teen shillings was it ? — a great affair we thought 
it then — which you had lavished on the old folio. 
Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases 
you, but I do not see that you ever bring me 
home any nice old purchases now. 

*' When you came home with twenty apologies 
for laying out a less number of shillings upon that 
print after Lionardo, which we christened the 
' Lady Blanch ' ; when you looked at the pur- 
chase, and thought of the money, — and looked 
again at the picture, — was there no pleasure in 
being a poor man ? Now, you have nothing to do 
but walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of 
Lionardos. Yet do you ? 

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks 
to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when 
we had a holiday — holidays, and all other fun, 
are gone now we are rich — and the little hand- 
basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare 
of savory cold lamb and salad, — and how you 
would pry about at noontide for some decent 
house, where we might go in and produce our 
store — only paying for the ale that you must call 
for — and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, 
and whether she w^as likely to allow us a table- 
cloth — and wished for such another honest host- 
ess as Izaak Walton has described many a one 
on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went 
a-fishing — and sometimes they would prove oblig- 
ing enough, and sometimes they would look grudg- 
ingly upon us, — but we had cheerful looks still for 



©ID Cbina. 439 

one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, 
scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now 
— when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is 
seldom, moreover, we ride part of the way, and 
go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, 
never debating the expense, — which, after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country 
snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain 
usage, and a precarious welcome. 

* ' You are too proud to see a play anywhere 
now but in the pit. Do you remember where it 
was we used to sit when we saw the Battle of 
Hexham, and the surrender of Calais, and Ban- 
nister and Mrs. Bland in the ** Children in the 
Wood," — when we squeezed out our shillings 
a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the 
one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time 
that you ought not to have brought me — and more 
strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought 
me — and the pleasure was the better for a little 
shame, — and when the curtain drew up, what 
cared w^e for our place in the house, or what mat- 
tered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts 
were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the 
Court of lllyria ? You used to say that the gallery 
was the best place of all for enjoying a play so- 
cially, — that the relish of such exhibitions must be 
in proportion to the infrequency of going, — that 
the company we met there, not being in general 
readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, 
and did attend, to what was going on on the stage, 
— because a word lost would have been a chasm 
which it was impossible for them to fill up. With 
such reflections we consoled our pride then, — and 
I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I metgener- 



440 E50a^5 Of Blia. 

ally with less attention and accommodation than 
I have done since in more expensive situations in 
the house ! The getting in, indeed, and the crowd- 
ing up those inconvenient staircases, were bad 
enough, — but there was still a law of civility to 
woman recognized to quite as great an extent as 
we ever found in the other passages, — and how a 
little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat 
and the play afterwards ! Now we can only pay 
our money and walk in. You cannot see, you 
say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and 
heard too, well enough then, — but sight and all, 
I think, are gone with our poverty. 

' ' There was pleasure in eating strawberries 
before they became quite common — in the first 
dish of peas, while they were yet dear, — to have 
them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can 
we have now ? If we were to treat ourselves 
now, — that is, to have dainties a little above our 
means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the 
very little more than we allow ourselves beyond 
what the actual poor can get at, that makes what 
I call a treat, — when two people living together, 
as we have done, now and then indulge them- 
selves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while 
each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves 
of the blame to his single share. I see no harm 
in people making much of themselves, in that sense 
of the word. It may give them a hint how to make 
much of others. But now, what I mean by the 
word — we never do make much of ourselves. 
None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the 
veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just 
above poverty. 

** I know what you are going to say — that it is 



©IJ) dbina. 441 

mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make 
all meet ; and much ado we used to have every 
thirty-first night of December to account for our 
exceedings ; many a long face did you make over 
your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make 
it out how we had spent so much — or that we had 
not spent so much — or that it was impossible we 
should spend so much next year, — and still we 
found our slender capital decreasing ; but then, — 
betwixt ways and projects, and compromises of 
one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this 
charge, and doing without that for the future, — 
and the hope that youth brings, and laughing 
spirits (in which you were never poof till now), 
we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 
* lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of 
hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we 
used to welcome in the ' coming guest' Now we 
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year, 
— no flattering promises about the new year doing 
better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most 
occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical 
vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could 
not help, however, smiling at the phantom of 
wealth which her dear imagination had. conjured 

up out of the clear income of poor hundred 

pounds a year. ''It is true, we were happier 
when we were poorer, but we were also younger, 
my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the 
excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into 
the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. 
That we had much to struggle with as we grew 
up together, we have reason to be most thankful. 
It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We 



442 iBssa^e of Blia. 

could never have been what we have been to 
each other if we had always had the sufficiency 
which you now complain of. The resisting 
power, — those natural dilations of the youthful 
spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten, — 
with us are long since passed away. Competence 
to age is supplementary youth ; a sorry supple- 
ment, indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. 
We must ride where we formerly walked ; live 
better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — 
than we had means to do in those good old days 
you speak of. Yet could those days return, — 
could you and I once more walk our thirty miles 
a day, — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again 
be young, and you and I be young to see them, 
— could the good old one-shilling gallery days re- 
turn, — they are dreams, my cousin now, — but 
could you and I at this moment, instead of this 
quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sit- 
ting on this luxurious sofa, be once more strug- 
gling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed 
about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
rabble of poor gallery scramblers, — could I once 
more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, — and 
the delicious Hiank God, we are safe, which 
always followed when the topmost stair, con- 
quered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful 
theatre down beneath us, — I know not the 
fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as 
I would be willing to bury more wealth in than 

Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed 

to have, to purchase it. And now, do just look 
at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an 
umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the 
head of that pretty, insipid, half Madonna-ish chit 
of a lady in that very blue summer-house. " 



THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 



I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest fantastical 
thing of a dream the other night that you shall 
hear of. I had been reading the " Loves of the 
Angels," and went to bed with my head full of spec- 
ulations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. 
It had given birth to innumerable conjectures ; 
and I remember the last waking thought which 
I gave expression to on my pillow was a sort of 
wonder ''what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I 
could scarcely make out — but to some celestial 
region. It was not the real heavens neither — ^iiot 
the downright Bible heaven — but a kind of fairy- 
land heaven, about which a poor human fancy 
may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, 
without presumption. 

Methought — what wild things dreams are ! — 
I was present — at what would you imagine ? — at 
an angel's gossiping. 

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid 
it come, or whether it came purely of its own 
head, neither you nor I know ; but there lay, sure 
enough, wrapped in its little cloudy swaddling- 
bands, A Child Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the 
celestial napery of what seemed its princely 

443 



444 iBsen^Q Of Blla. 

cradle. All the winged orders hovered around, 
watching when the new-born should open its yet 
closed eyes ; which, when it did, first one and 
then the other, — with a solicitude and apprehen- 
sion, yet not such as, stained with fear, dim the 
expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to 
explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces, 
— what an inextinguishable titter that time spared 
not celestial visages ! Nor wanted there to my 
seeming, — oh, the inexplicable simpleness of 
dreams 1 bowls of that cheering nectar, 

— which mortals candle call below. 

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — 
stricken in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous 
were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit 
kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terres- 
trial child-rites the young present, which earth had 
made to heaven. 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full 
symphony as those by which the spheres are 
tutored ; but, as loudest instruments on earth 
speak oftentimes, muffled ; so to accommodate 
their sound the better to the weak ears of the 
imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those 
subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, 
fluttering its rudiments of pinions, but forthwith 
flagged and was recovered into the arms of those 
full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see 
how, as years went round in heaven — a year in 
dreams is as a day — continually its white shoul- 
ders put forth buds of wings, but wanting the 
perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its 
aspiring, and fell fluttering, — still caught by 



Zbc GbilD Bn^el ; 21 Bream, 445 

angel hands, — forever to put forth shoots, and to 
fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the 
unmixed vigor of heaven. 

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and 
it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its pro- 
duction was of earth and heaven. 

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its 
adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to 
know weakness and reliance and the shadow of 
human imbecility ; and it went with a lame gait, 
but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children 
in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang 
up in angelic bosoms, and yearnings (like the 
human) touched them at the sight of the immor- 
tal lame one. 

And with pain did then first those Intuitive 
Essences, with pain and strife, to their natures 
(not grief,), put back their bright intelligences, 
and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them 
to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt 
their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must 
needs be) of the half-earth born ; and what intui- 
tive notices they could not repel (by reason that 
their nature is to know all things at once), the half- 
heavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, 
aspired to receive into its understanding ; so that 
Humility and Aspiration went on even paced in 
the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too 
gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile re- 
gion, its portion was, and is, to be a child forever. 

And because the human part of it might not 
press into the heart and inwards of the palace of 
its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it 
by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were 



446 JBssn>S6 ot Blfa. 

shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth 
from which it came ; so love, with Voluntary 
Humility, waited upon the entertainment of the 
new-adopted. 

And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams 
time is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, 
perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of 
Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and 
lovely. 

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone 
sitting by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom 
the angel Nadir loved, a Child, but not the same 
which I saw in heaven. A mournful hue over- 
casts its lineaments ; nevertheless, a correspond- 
ency is between the child by the grave and the 
celestial orphan whom I saw above ; and the dim- 
ness of the grief upon the heavenly is a shadow 
or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the 
terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be 
understood but by dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to 
read, how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled 
from his place for mortal passion, upspringing 
on the wings of parental love (such power had 
parental love for a moment to suspend the else- 
irrevocable law), appeared for a brief instant in 
his station, and, depositing a wondrous Birth, 
straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew 
him no more. And this charsfe was the selfsame 
Babe, who goeth lame and lovely, — but Adah 
sleepeth by the river Pison. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 



Dehortations from the use of strong- liquors 
have been the favorite topic of sober declaimers 
in all ages, and have been received with abun- 
dance of applause by water-drinking critics. 
But with the patient himself, the man that is to 
be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom 
prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the 
remedy is simple. Abstain. No force can oblige 
a man to raise the glass to his head against his 
will. T is as easy as not to steal, not to tell 
lies. 

Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear 
false witness, have no constitutional tendency. 
These are actions indifferent to them. At the first 
instance of the reformed will, they can be brought 
off without a murmur. The itching finger is but a 
figure in speech, and the tongue of the liar can 
with the same natural delight give forth useful 
truths with which it has been accustomed to 
scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a 
man has commenced sot 

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of 
stout nerves and a strong head, whose liver is 
happily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at 
the name which I have written, first learn what 
the thing is ; how much of compassion, how much 

447.- 



448 Bssags of sua. 

of human allowance, thou mayest virtuously min- 
gle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on 
the ruins of a man. Exact not, under so terrible 
a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state 
of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus 
rose not but by a miracle. 

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it 
easy. But what if the beginning be dreadful, the 
first steps not like climbing a mountain but going 
through fire ? what if the whole system must un- 
dergo a change violent as that which we conceive 
of the mutation of form in some insects .? what if 
a process comparable to flaying alive be to be 
gone through ? is the weakness that sinks under 
such struggles to be confounded with the perti- 
nacity which clings to other vices, which have 
induced no constitutional necessity, no engage- 
ment of the whole victim, body and soul ? 

I have known one in that state, when he has 
tried to abstain but for one evening, — though the 
poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back 
its first enchantments, though he was sure it 
would rather deepen his gloom than brighten it, — 
in the violence of the struggle, and the necessity 
he has felt of getting rid of the present sensation 
at any rate, I have known him to scream out, to 
cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife 
within him. 

Why should I hesitate to declare that the man 
of whom I speak is myself? I have no puling 
apology to make to mankind. I see them all in 
one way or another deviating from the pure 
reason. It is to my own nature alone I am 
accountable for the woe that I have brought 
upon it. 



Confessions of a DcunRarD. 449 

I believe that there are constitutions, robust 
heads, and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses 
can hurt ; whom brandy (I have seen them drink 
it like wine), at all events whom w4ne, taken in 
ever so plentiful a measure, can do no worse 
injury to than just to muddle their faculties, per- 
haps never very pellucid. On them this discourse 
is wasted. They would but laugh at a weak 
brother, who trying his strength with them, and 
coming off foiled from the contest, would fain 
persuade them that such agonistic exercises are 
dangerous. It is to a very different description 
of persons I speak. It is to the weak, the nervous ; 
to those who feel the want of some artificial aid 
to raise their spirits in society to what is no more 
than the ordinary pitch of all around them with- 
out it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such 
must fly the convivial board in the first instance, 
if they do not mean to sell themselves for a term 
of life. 

Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and- 
twentieth year. I had lived from the period of 
leaving school at that time pretty much in soli- 
tude. My companions were chiefly books, or at 
most one or two living ones, of my own book- 
loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to 
bed betimes, and the faculties which God had 
given me, I have reason to think, did not rust in 
me urmsed. 

About that time I fell in with some companions 
of a different order. They were men of boisterous 
spirits, sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken ; 
yet seemed to have something noble about them. 
We dealt about the wit, or what passes for it after 
midnight, jovially. Of the quality called fane/ I 
29 



450 JB$eti^6 of Elia. 

certainly possessed a larger share than my com- 
panions. Encouraged by their applause, I set up 
for a professed joker ! I, who of all men am 
least fitted for such an occupation, having, in 
addition to the greatest difficulty which I experi- 
ence at all times of finding words to express any 
meaning, a natural nervous impediment in my 
speech ! 

Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, 
aspire to any character but that of a wit. When 
you find a tickling relish upon your tongue dis- 
posing you to that sort of conversation, especially 
if you find a preternatural flow of ideas setting in 
upon you at the sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, 
avoid giving way to it as you would fly your 
greatest destruction. If you cannot crush the 
power of fancy, or that within you which you 
mistake for such, divert it, give it some other 
play. Write an essay, pen a character or descrip- 
tion, — but not as I do now, with tears trickling 
down your cheeks. 

To be an object of compassion to friends, of 
derision to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, 
stared at by fools ; to be esteemed dull when you 
cannot be witty, to be applauded for witty when 
you know that you have been dull ; to be called 
upon for extemporaneous exercise of that faculty 
which no premeditation can give ; to be spurred 
on to efforts which end in contempt ; to be set on 
to provoke mirth which procures the procurer 
hatred ; to give pleasure and be paid with squint- 
ing* malice ; to swallow draughts of life-destroying 
wlnQ, which ftr§ to be distilled into airy breath to 
tickle vain auditors ■ to mortgage miserable mor- 
rows for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas 



Gonte06ion0 of a DrunftarO. 451 

of time upon those who pay it back in little incon- 
siderable drops of grudging applause, — are the 
wages of buffoonery and death. 

Time, which has a sure stroke of dissolving all 
connections which have no solider fastening than 
this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own 
taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to 
the supposed qualities of my first friends. No 
trace of them is left but in the vices which they 
introduced, and the habits they infixed. In them 
my friends survive still, and exercise ample retri- 
bution for any supposed infidelity that I may have 
been guilty of towards them. 

My next more immediate companions were 
and are persons of such intrinsic and felt worth, 
that, though accidentally, their acquaintance has 
proved pernicious to me, I do not know that if 
the thing were to do over again, I should have 
the courage to eschew the mischief at the price 
of forfeiting the benefit. I came to them reeking 
from the steams of my late overheated notion of 
companionship ; and the slightest fuel which they 
unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to feed my 
old fires into a propensity. 

They were no drinkers, but, one from profes- 
sional habits, and another from a custom derived 
from his father, smoked tobacco. The devil could 
not have devised a more subtle trap to retake a 
backsliding penitent. The transition from gulp- 
ing down draughts of liquid fire to puffing out in- 
nocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like cheating 
him. But he is too hard for us when we hope to 
commute. He beats us at barter ; and when we 
think to set off a new failing against an old in- 
firmity, 't is odds but h© puts the trick upon us of 



452 S50as6 ot j£lia. 

two for one. That (comparatively) white devil 
of tobacco brought with him in the end seven 
worse than himself. 

It were impertinent to carry the reader through 
all the processes by which, from smoking at first 
with malt liquor, I took my degrees through thin 
wines, through stronger wine and water, through 
small punch, to those juggling compositions, 
which, under the name of mixed liquors, slur a 
great deal of brandy or other poison under less 
and less water continually, until they come next 
to none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful 
to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus. 

I should repel my readers, from a mere inca- 
pacity of believing me, were I to tell them what 
tobacco has been to me, the drudging service 
which I have paid, the slavery which I have 
vowed to it. How, when I have resolved to quit 
it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up ; how 
it has put on personal claims and made the de- 
mands of a friend upon me. How the reading of 
it casually in a book, as where Adams takes his 
whiff in the chimney-corner of some inn in 
"Joseph Andrews," or Piscator in the "Complete 
Angler " breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in 
that delicate room Piscatorihus Sacrum, has in a 
moment broken down the resistance of weeks. 
How a pipe was ever in my midnight path be- 
fore me, till the vision forced me to realize it, — 
how then its ascending vapors curled, its fra- 
grance lulled, and the thousand delicious minister- 
ings conversant about it, employing every faculty, 
extracted the sense of pain. How from illumi- 
nating it came to darken, from a quick solace it 
turned to a negative relief, thence to a restless- 



Confessions ot a DrunftarD, 453 

ness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive mis- 
ery. How, even now, when the whole secret 
stands confessed in all its dreadful truth before 
me, I feel myself linked to it beyond the power 
of revocation. Bone of my bone 

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives 
of their actions, to reckon up the countless nails 
that rivet the chains of habit, or perhaps being 
bound by none so obdurate as those I have con- 
fessed to, may recoil from this as from an over- 
charged picture. But what short of such a bond- 
age is it, which in spite of protesting friends, a 
weeping wife, and a reprobating world, chains 
down many a poor fellow, of no original indispo- 
sition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot ? 

I have seen a print after Correggio, in which 
three female figures are ministering to a man who 
sits fast bound at the root of a tree. Sensuality 
is soothing him. Evil Habit is nailing him to a 
branch, and Repugnance at the same instant of 
time is applying a snake to his side. In his face 
is feeble delight, the recollection of past rather 
than perception of present pleasures, languid en- 
joyment of evil with utter imbecility to good, a 
Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission to bondage, 
the springs of the will gone down like a broken 
clock, the sin and the suffering co-instantaneous,' 
or the latter forerunning the former, remorse pre- 
ceding action — all this represented in one point of 
time. When I saw this, I admired the wonderful 
skill of the painter. But when I went away, I 
wept, because I thought of my own condition. 

Of that there is no hope that it should ever 
change. The waters have gone over me. But 
out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would 



454 Essays of Elfa. 

cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the 
perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the 
flavor of his first wine is delicious as the opening 
scenes of life or the entering upon some newly 
discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and 
be made to understand what a dreary thing it is 
when a man shall feel himself going down a prec- 
ipice with open eyes and a passive will, — to see 
his destruction and have no power to stop it, and 
yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; 
to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and 
yet not to be able to forget a time when it was 
otherwise ; to bear about the piteous spectacle of 
his own self-ruin ; — could he see my fevered eye, 
feverish with last night's drinking, and feverishly 
looking for this night's repetition of the folly ; 
could he feel the body of the death out of which 
I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be 
delivered, — it were enough to make him dash the 
sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of 
its mantling temptation ; to make him clasp his 
teeth, 

and not undo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em. 

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if 
sobriety be that fine thing you would have us to 
understand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to 
be preferred to that state of heated excitement 
which you describe and deplore, what hinders in 
your instance that you do not return to those 
habits from which you would induce others never 
to swerve ? if the blessing be worth preserving, is 
it not worth recovering? 

Recovering /* Oh, if a wish could transport me 



Confessions of a BrunftacO. 



455 



back to those days of youth, when a draught from 
the next clear spring could slake any heats which 
summer suns and youthful exercise had power to 
stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return 
to thee, pure element, the drink of children and 
of childHke holy hermit ! In my dreams I can 
sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purling 
over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach 
rejects it. That which refreshes innocence only 
makes me sick and faint. 

But is there no middle way betwixt total absti- 
nence and the excess which kills you ? For your 
sake, reader, and that you may never attain to 
my experience, with pain I must utter the dread- 
ful truth, that there is none, — none that I can 
find. In my stage of habit (I speak not of habits 
less confirmed — ^for some of them I believe the 
advice to be most prudential), in the stage which 
I have reached, to stop short of that measure 
which is sufiicient to draw on torpor and sleep, 
the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, 
is to have taken none at all. The pain of the 
self-denial is all one. And what that is, I had 
rather the reader should believe on my credit, 
than know from his own trial. He will come to 
know it whenever he shall arrive in that state, in 
which, paradoxical as it may appear, reason shall 
only visit him through intoxication ; for it is a fear- 
ful truth, that the intellectual faculties by repeated 
acts of intemperance may be driven from their 
orderly sphere of action, their clear daylight min- 
istries, until they shall be brought at last to 
depend, for the faint manifestation of their depart- 
ing energies, upon the returning periods of the 
fatal madness to which they owe their devastation. 



456 B60aig6 ot Blia. 

The drinking man is never less himself than 
during his sober intervals. Evil is so far his 
good. * 

Behold me, then, in the robust period of life, 
reduced to imbecility and decay. Hear mec;ount 
my gains, and the profits which I have derived 
from the midnight cup. 

Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy 
frame of mind and body. I was never strong, 
but I think my constitution (for a weak one) was 
as happily exempt from the tendency to any mal- 
ady as it was possible to be. I scarce knew what 
it was to ail any thing. Now, except when I am 
losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never free 
from those uneasy sensations in head and stomach, 
which are so much worse to bear than any definite 
pains or aches. 

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in 
the morning, summer and winter. I awoke re- 
freshed, and seldom without some merry thoughts 
in my head, or some piece of a song to welcome 
the new-born day. Now, the first feeling which 
besets me, after stretching out the hours of recum- 
brance to their last possible extent, is a forecast 
of the wearisome day that lies before me, with a 
secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never 
awaked. 

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the 
confusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of 

* When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil 

in one trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the 
other, his fingers owed the comparative steadiness with which 
they were enabled to go through their task in an imperfect 
manner, to a temporary firmness derived from a repetition of 
practices, the general effect of which had shaken both them 
and him so terribly. 



Confessions ot a H^runftarD. 457 

an ill dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark 
mountains. 

Business, which, though never very particularly 
adapted to my nature, yet as something of neces- 
sity to be gone through, and therefore best under- 
taken with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with 
some degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, 
perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of discourage- 
ments, and am ready to give up an occupation 
which gives me bread, from a harassing conceit 
of incapacity. The slightest commission given 
me by a friend, or any small duty which I have 
to perform for myself, as giving orders to trades- 
men, etc., haunts me as a labor impossible to get 
through. So much the springs of action are 
broken. 

The same cowardice attends me in all my in- 
tercourse with mankind. I dare not promise that 
a friend's honor, or his cause, would be safe in 
my keeping, if I were put to the expense of any 
manly resolution in defending it. So much the 
springs of moral action are deadened within me. 

My favorite occupations in times past now cease 
to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Appli- 
cation for ever so short a time kills me. This 
poor abstract of my condition was penned at long 
intervals, with scarcely any attempt in connection 
of thought, which is now difficult to me. 

The noble passages which formerly delighted 
me in history or poetic fiction, now only draw 
a few weak tears, allied to dotage. My broken 
and dispirited nature seems to sink before any 
thing great and admirable. 

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any 
cause, or none. It is inexpressible how much 



458 Bs0ai26 of ;6lia. 

this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and a 
general feeling of deterioration. 

These are some of the instances, concerning 
which I can say with truth, that it was not always 
so with me. 

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any 
further ? or is the disclosure sufficient ? 

I am a poor, nameless egotist, who have no 
vanity to consult by these Confessions. I know 
not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard seri- 
ously. Such as they are I commend them to the 
reader's attention, if he found his own case any 
way touched. I have told him what I have come 
to. Let him stop in time. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 
I. 

THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD, 



This axiom contains a principle of the com- 
pensation which disposes us to admit the truth of 
it. But there is no safe trusting to dictionaries 
and definitions. We should more willingly fall 
in with this popular language if we did not find 
brutality sometimes awkwardly coupled with valor 
in the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with 
their poetical justice, have contributed not a little 
to mislead us upon this point. To see a hector- 
ing fellow exposed and beaten upon the stage has 
something in it wonderfully diverting. Some 
people's share of animal spirits is notoriously low 
and defective. It has not strength to raise a vapor, 
or furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. 
They love to be told that huffing is no part of 
valor. The truest courage with them is that which 
is the least noisy and obtrusive. But confront 
one of these silent heroes with the swaggerer of 
life, and his confidence in the theory quickly 
vanishes. Pretensions do not uniformly bespeak 
non-performance. A modest, inoffensive deport- 
ment does not necessarily imply valor ; neither 

459 



460 1836^^6 Of Blfa. 

does the absence of it justify us in denying that 
quality. Hickman wanted modesty, — we do not 
mean him of Clarissa, — but who ever doubted his 
courage ? Even the poets — upon whom this 
equitable distribution of qualities should be most 
binding — have thought it agreeable to nature to 
depart from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in 
the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the re- 
ceived notions. Milton has made him at once a 
blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, 
in Dryden, talks of driving armies singly before 
him — and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder 
insight into this kind of character than either of 
his predecessors. He divides the palm more 
equably, and allows his hero a sort of dimidiate 
preeminence : " Bully Dawson kicked by half the 
town and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." 
This was true distributive justice. 



II. 

THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 

The weakest part of mankind have this saying 
commonest in their mouth. It is the trite conso- 
lation administered to the easy dupe when he has 
been tricked out of his money or estate, that the 
acquisition of it will do the owner no good. But the 
rogues of this world — the prudenter part of them, 
at least — know better, and if the observation had 
been as true as it is old, would not have failed by 
this time to have discovered it. They have pretty 
sharp distinctions of the fluctuating and the perma- 
nent. "Lightly come, lightly go," is a proverb 



IPopular jfallades. 461 

which they can very well afford to leave when 
they leave little else to the losers. They do not 
always find manners, got by rapine or chicanery, 
insensible to melt away, as the poets will have it ; 
or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from 
the thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, 
alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced to 
have this slippery quality. But some portion of it 
somehow always stuck so fast that the denunci- 
ators have been fain to postpone the prophecy of 
refundment to a late posterity. 



III. 

THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST. 

The severest exaction surely ever invented 
upon the self-denial of poor human nature ! This 
is to expect a gentleman to give a treat without 
partaking of it ; to sit esurient at his own table 
and commend the flavor of his venison upon the 
absurd strength of his never touching it himself. 
On the contrary, we love to see a wag fas/e his 
own joke to his party ; to watch a quirk or a 
merry conceit flickering upon the lips some 
seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If it 
be good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the occa- 
sion ; if he that utters it never thought it before, 
he is naturally the first to be tickled with it, and 
any suppression of such complacence we hold to 
be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to 
imply but that your company is weak or foolish 
enough to be moved by an image or a fancy that 
shall stir you not at all, or but faintly. This is 



462 jEssaijs of j6Ua. 

exactly the humor of the fine gentleman in 
** Mandeville," who, while he dazzles his guests 
with the display of some costly toy, affects him- 
self to *' see nothing considerable in it." 



IV. 



THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING — THAT IT IS 
EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN. 

A Speech from the poorest sort of people, which 
always indicates that the party vituperated is a 
gentleman. The very fact which they deny is 
that which galls and exasperates them to use this 
language. The forbearance with which it is 
usually received is a proof what interpretation the 
bystander sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still 
less politic, are the phrases with which, in their 
street rhetoric, they ply one another more grossly : 
He is a poor creature ; he has not a rag to co7)er 

,'' etc. ; though this last, we confess, is more 

frequently applied by females to females. They 
do not perceive that the satire glances upon them- 
selves. A poor man, of all the things in the 
world, should not upbraid an antagonist with 
poverty. Are there no other topics — as, to tell 
him his father was hanged ; his sister, etc., 
without exposing a secret which should be kept 
snug between them, and doing an affront to the 
order to which they have the honor equally to 
belong .? All this while they do not see how the 
wealthier man stands by and laughs in his sleeve 
at both. 



IPopulac 3faUac(e6. 463 

V. 

THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH. 

A smooth text to the letter, and, preached from 
the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the 
pews lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon 
velvet to a foolish squire to be told that he — and 
not perverse nature, as the homilies would make 
us imagine — is the true cause of all the irregular- 
ities in his parish. This is striking at the root of 
free-will indeed, and denying the originality of 
sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit 
sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence from 
evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive 
itself from no higher principle than the apprehen- 
sion of setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg 
leave to discharge them from all squeamishness 
on that score ; they may even take their fill of 
pleasures where they can find them. The Genius 
of Poverty, hampered and straightened as it is, is 
not so barren of invention but it can trade upon 
the staple of its own vice without drawing upon 
their capital. The poor are not quite such servile 
imitators as they take them for. Some of them 
are very clever artists in their way. Here and 
there we find an original. Who taught the poor 
to steal, to pilfer .? They did not go to the great 
for schoolmasters in these faculties surely. It is 
well if in some vices they allow us to be — no 
copyists. In no other sense is it true that the 
poor copy them, than as servants may be said to 
take after their masters and mistresses when they 
succeed to their reversionary cold meats. If 



464 B6sa^0 of leua. 

the master, from indisposition or some other 
cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwith- 
standing. 

" Oh, but (some will say) the force of example 
is great." We knew a lady who was so scrupu- 
lous on this head that she would put up with the 
calls of the most impertinent visitor rather than 
let her servant say she was not at home for fear 
of teaching her maid to tell an untruth, and this 
in the very face of the fact, which she knew well 
enough, that the wench was one of the greatest 
liars upon the earth without teaching — so much 
so, that her mistress possibly never heard two 
words of consecutive truth from her in her life. 
But nature must go for nothing : example must be 
every thing. This liar in grain, who never opened 
her mouth without a lie, must be guarded against 
a remote inference, which she (pretty casuist !) 
might possibly draw from a form of words — liter- 
ally false, but essentially deceiving no one — that 
under some circumstances a fib might not be so 
exceedingly sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in 
her own way, or one that she could be suspected 
of adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be 
denied to visitors. 

This word example reminds us of another fine 
word which is in use upon these occasions — en- 
couragement. "People in our sphere must not 
be thought to give encouragement to such pro- 
ceedings." To such a frantic height is this prin- 
ciple capable of being carried that we have known 
individuals who have thought it within the scope 
of their influence to sanction despair, and give 
idai — to suicide. A domestic in the family of a 
county member lately deceased, from love or 



popular iFallacfea. 465 

some unknown cause, cut his throat, but not suc- 
cessfully. The poor fellow was otherwise much 
loved and respected, and great interest was used 
in his behalf upon his recovery that he might be 
permitted to retain his place ; his word being first 
pledged, not without some substantial sponsors 
to promise for him, that the like should never 
happen again. His master was inclinable to keep 
him, but his mistress thought otherwise, and John 
in the end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring 
that she "could not think of encouraging any 
such doings in the county." 

VI. 

THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 

Not a man, woman, or child in ten miles round 
Guildhall who really believes this saying. The 
inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was 
made in revenge by somebody who was disap- 
pointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mut- 
ton sophism, a lie palmed upon the palate, which 
knows better things. If nothing else could be 
said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from the super- 
flux there is usually something left for the next 
day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of 
proverbs which have a tendency to make us under- 
value money. Of this cast are those notable ob- 
servations that money is not health ; riches cannot 
purchase every thing : the metaphor which makes 
gold to be mere muck, with the morality which 
traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and de- 
nounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an 
oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes 

30 



466 :606a^5 ot lElfa, 

dirt to acres — a sophistry so barefaced that even 
the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. 
This, and abundance of similar sage saws assum- 
ing to inculcate content, we verily believe to have 
been the invention of some cunning borrower, 
who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier 
neighbor, which he could only hope to carry out 
by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any 
one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy 
which envelops it and the trick is apparent. 
Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating 
cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of see- 
ing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, 
a man's own time to himself, are not muck — how- 
ever we may be pleased to scandalize with that 
appellation the faithful metal that provides them 
for us. 

VII. 

OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMER IS GENERALLY IN THE 

WRONG. 

Our experience would lead us to quite an op- 
posite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of 
truth ; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at 
least of a man's own conviction of the rectitude 
of that which he maintains. Coolness is as often 
the result of an unprincipled indifference to truth 
or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's 
own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting 
sometimes than the appearance of this philo- 
sophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stam- 
mering law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn, — we have 
seldom known this shrewd little fellow engaged 
in an argument where we were not convinced he 



popular jfallades^ 467 

ihad the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly 
have seconded him. When he has been splutter- 
ing excellent broken sense for an hour together, 
writhing and laboring to be delivered of the point 
of dispute, — the very gist of the controversy 
knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate 
iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance, — his 
puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over 
at an unfairness in the logic which he wanted 
articulation to expose, it has moved our gall to 
see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that 
cared not a button for the merits of the question, 
by merely laying his hand upon the head of the 
stationer, and desiring him to be calm (your tall 
disputants have always the advantage,) with a 
provoking sneer carry the argument clean from 
him in the opinion of all the bystanders, who have 
gone away clearly convinced that Titubus must 
have been in the wrong, because he was in a pas- 
sion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, 

is one of the fairest and at the same time one of 
the most dispassionate arguers breathing. 

VIII. 

THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY 
WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION. 

The same flight be said of the wittiest local 
allusions. A custom is sometimes as difficult to 
explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would be- 
come of a great part of the wit of the last age if 
it were tried by this test ? How would certain 
topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have sounded 
to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself 



468 Bssa^s of Blta, 

had been alive to translate them ? Senator urbanus 
with Curruca to boot for a synonyme, would but 
faintly have done the business. Words, involving 
notions, are hard enough to render ; it is too 
much to expect us to translate a sound, and give 
an elegant version to a jingle. The Virgilian har- 
mony is not translatable but by substituting har- 
monious sounds in another language for it. To 
Latinize a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin that 
will answer it ; as to give an idea of the double 
endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse to 
a similar practice in the old monkish doggerel. 
Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient 
or modern times, professes himself highly tickled 
with the "a stick," chiming to "ecclesiastic." 
Yet what is this but a species of pun, a verbal 
consonance ? 

IX. 

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched 
and startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound 
by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol 
let off at the ear ; not a feather to tickle the intel- 
lect. It is an antic which does not stand upon 
manners, but comes bounding into the presence, 
and does not show the less comic for being 
dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. 
What though it limp a little, or prove defective in 
one leg .? — all the better. A pun may easily be 
too curious and artificial. Who has not at one 
time or other been at a party of professors (him- 
self perhaps an old offender in that line), where, 



IPopulac ^fallacies. 469 

after ringing a round of the most ingenious con- 
ceits, every man contributing his shot, and some 
there the most expert shooters of the day ; after 
making a poor woj-d run the gauntlet till it is 
ready to drop ; after hunting and winding it 
through all the possible ambages of similar 
sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and tug- 
ging at it till the very milk of it will not yield a 
drop further, — suddenly some obscure, unthought- 
of fellow in a corner who was never 'prentice to 
the trade, whom the company for very pity passed 
over, as we do by a known poor man when a 
money-subscription is going round, no one calling 
upon him for his quota, — has all at once come out 
with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; 
so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to 
be denied ; so exquisitely good, and so deplorably 
bad, at the same time, — that it has proved a 
Robin Hood's shot ; any thing ulterior to that is 
despaired of; and the party breaks up, unani- 
mously voting it to be the very worst (that is, 
best) pun of the evening. This species of wit is 
the better for not being perfect in all its parts. 
What it gains in completeness, it loses in natural- 
ness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, 
the less hold it has upon some other faculties. 
The puns which are most entertaining are those 
which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind 
is the following, recorded with a sort of stigma, in 
one of Swift's Miscellanies : 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was 
carrying a hare through the streets, accosts him 
with this extraordinary question : ''Prithee, friend, 
is that thine own hare or a wig } " 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A 



470. Essays of jSlia. 

man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting 
a defence of it against a critic who should be 
laughter-proof. The quibble in itself is not con- 
siderable. It is only a new turn given by a little 
false pronunciation, to a very common, though 
not very courteous, inquiry. Put by one gentle- 
man to another at a dinner party, it would have 
been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it 
would have shown much less wat than rudeness. 
We must take in the totality of time, place, and 
person ; the pert look of the inquiring scholar, 
the desponding looks of the puzzled porter, — the 
one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying on 
with his burden ; the innocent though rather 
abrupt tendency of the first member of the ques- 
tion, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy 
of the second ; the place — a public street not 
favorable to frivolous investigations ; the affront- 
ive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common 
question) invidiously transferred to the deriva- 
tive (the new turn given to it) in the implied 
satire ; namely, that few of that tribe are expected 
to eat of the good things which they carry, they 
being in most countries considered rather as the 
temporary trustees than owners of such dainties, 
— which the fellow was beginning to understand ; 
but then the wig again comes in, and he can 
make nothing of it ; all put together constitute a 
picture ; Hogarth could have made it intelligible 
on canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a 
very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the 
concluding member, which is its very beauty, and 
constitutes the surprise. The same person shall 
cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil 



popular ^fallacies* 471 

about the broken Cremona,* because it is made 
out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the 
imagination. We venture to call it cold, because, 
of thousands who have admired it, it would be 
difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at 
it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting 
the risible faculty aside), we must pronounce it a 
nionument of curious felicity. But as some stories 
are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal 
truth be asserted of this bi verbal allusion, that it is 
too good to be natural. One cannot help suspect- 
ing that the incident was invented to fit the line. 
It would have been better had it been less perfect. 
Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by 
filling up. The nimiuni Vicina was enough in 
conscience ; the Cremoncs afterwards loads it. It 
is in fact a double pun ; and we have always 
observed that a superfoetation in this sort of wit 
is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, 
it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not 
care to be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps, the 
mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not 
capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. 
The impression, to be forcible, must be simul- 
taneous and undivided. 

X. 

THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. 

Those who use this proverb can never have 
seen Mrs. Conrady. 

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray 

* Swift. 



472 J£6sa^6 of J6l(a, 

from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more 
or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with 
corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement 
which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable 
mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. 
Conrady, in her preexistent state, was no great 
judge of architecture. 

To the same effect, in a hymn in honor of 
Beauty, divine Spenser platonizing, sings : — 

Every spirit as it is more pure, 

And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take : 
For soul is form and doth the body make. 

But Spenser it is clear never saw Mrs. Con- 
rady. 

These poets, w^e find, are no safe guides in 
philosophy ; for here, in his very next stanza but 
one, is a saving clause, which throws us all out 
agahi, and leaves us as much to seek as ever : 



Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
Either by chance, against the course of kind, 
Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
That will not yield unto her form's direction, 
But is performed with some foul imperfection. 



From which it would follow, that Spenser had 
seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 



IPopulat iFallacies. 473 

The spirit of this good lady — her previous 
anima — must have stumbled upon one of these 
untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A 
more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, 
as the poet calls it, no gentle mind — and sure 
hers is one of the gentlest — ever had to deal 
with. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage, — in- 
explicable, we mean, but by this modification of 
the theory — we have come to a conclusion that, if 
one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, 
than amidst a tolerable residue of features, to hang 
out one that shall be exceptionable. No one can say 
of Mrs.Conrady's countenance that it would be bet- 
ter if she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her 
to pieces in this manner. We have seen the most 
malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the 
attempt at a selection. The iout-ensemble defies 
particularizing. It is too complete — too consistent 
as we may say, — to admit of these invidious 
reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had 
picked out here a lip — and there a chin — out of the 
collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. 
It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the 
minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel 
of the countenance in question ; to say that this, 
or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced 
that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true 
beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that too it 
reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw 
Mrs. Conrady, without pronouncing her to be the 
plainest woman that he ever met with in the 
course of his life. The first time that you are 
indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in 
your existence ever after. You are glad to have 



474 JBssass of iBlia. 

seen it — like Stonehenge. No one can pretend 
to forget it. No one ever apologized to her for 
meeting her in the street on such a day and not 
knowing lier ; the pretext would be too bare. 
Nobody can mistake her for another. Nobody 
can say of her: ''I think I have seen that face 
somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." 
You must remember that in such a parlor it first 
struck you — like a bust. You wondered where 
the owner of the house had picked it up. You 
wondered more when it began to move its lips — 
so mildly too ! No one ever thought of asking 
her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remem- 
brance ; and it would be clearly superfluous to 
hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, 
can never be out of it. It is not a mean face 
either ; its entire originality precludes that. 
Neither is it of that order of plain faces which 
improve upon acquaintance. Some very good 
but ordinary people, by an unwearied persever- 
ance in good offices, put a cheat upon our eyes ; 
juggle our senses out of their natural impressions ; 
and set us upon discovering good indications in a 
countenance which at first sight promised nothing 
less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped 
us, lurking about an underlip. But when Mrs. 
Conrady has done you a service, her face remains 
the same ; when she has done you a thousand, 
and you know that she is ready to double the 
number, still it is that individual face. Neither 
can you say of it, that it would be a good face if 
it were not marked by the small-pox, — a compli- 
ment which is always more admissive than ex- 
cusatory, — for either IMrs. Conrady never had the 
small-pox, or, as we say, took it kindly. No, 



IPopulat ^fallacies. 475 

it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it 
is. It is her mark, her token ; that which she is 
known by. 

XL 

THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH. 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We 
hope we have more delicacy than to do either ; 
but some faces spare us the trouble of these dental 
inquiries. And what if the beast, wiiich my 
friend would force upon my acceptance, prove, 
upon the face of it, a sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill- 
favored jade, whom no gentleman could think of 
setting up in his stables .? Must I, rather than not 
be obliged to my friend, make her a companion to 
Eclipse or Lightfoot ? A horse-giver, no more than 
a horse-seller, has a right to palm his spavined 
article upon us for good ware. An equivalent is 
expected in either case ; and, with my own good- 
will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks 
than out of my money. Some people have a knack 
of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to en- 
gage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them 
for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humor 
of never refusing a present to the very point of 
absurdity — if it were possible to couple the ridicu- 
lous with so much mistaken delicacy and real 
good-nature. Not an apartment in his fine house 
(and he has a true taste in household decorations) 
but is stuffed up with some preposterous print or 
mirror — the worst adapted to its panels that may 
be, — the presents of his friends that knew his weak- 
ness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, to 



476 J606ai20 of ;6lia. 

make room for a set of daubs, the work of some' 
wretched artist of his acquaintance, who having 
had them returned upon his hands for bad like- 
nesses, finds his account in bestowing them here 
gratis. The good creature has not the heart to 
mortify the painter at the expense of an honest 
refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the 
same time) to see him sitting in his dining-parlor, 
surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God 
knows whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady 
Bettys of his own honorable family, in favor to 
these adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase 
and the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly 
shelves are one by one stripped of his favorite old 
authors, to give place to a collection of presenta- 
tion copies — the flour and bran of modern poetry. 
A presentation copy, reader,— if haply you are yet 
innocent of such favors, — is a copy of a book which 
does not sell, sent you by the author, with his 
foolish autograph at the beginning of it ; for which, 
if a stranger, he only demands your friendship ; 
if a brother author, he expects from you a book 
of yours, which does sell, in return. We can 
speak from experience, having by us a tolerable 
assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a 
metaphor to death — we are willing to acknowl- 
edge that in some gifts there is sense. A dupli- 
cate out of a friend's library (where he has more 
than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. 
There are favors short of the pecuniary — a thing 
not fit to be hinted at among gentlemen — which 
confer as much grace upon the acceptor as the 
offerer ; the kind, we confess, which is most to 
our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, 
which for their vehicle generally choose a hamper. 



IPopular fallactes. 477 

' — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine, 
■ — though it is essential to the delicacy of the 
latter that it be home-made. We love to have 
our friend in the country sitting thus at our table 
by proxy ; to apprehend his presence (though a 
hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, 
whose goodly aspect reflects to us his ''plump 
corpusculum " ; to taste him in grouse or wood- 
cock : to feel him gliding down in the toast 
peculiar to the latter ; to concorporate him in a 
slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to 
have him within ourselves ; to know him inti- 
mately ; such participation is methinks unitive, as 
the old theologians phrase it. For these consid- 
erations we should be sorry if certain restrictive 
regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon 
the peasantry of this country, were entirely done 
away with. A hare, as the law now stands, 
makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius 
(knowing his goul) with a leash of partridges. 
Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes 
them to Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his 
friend's relish to his own, makes them Over to 
Marcius ; till in their ever-widening progress, and 
round of unconscious circummigration, they dis- 
tribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. 
We are well disposed to this kind of sensible re- 
membrances ; and are the less apt to be taken by 
those little airy tokens — impalpable to the palate 
— which, under the names of rings, lockets, keep- 
sakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
could never away with these indigestible trifles. 
They are the very kickshaws and foppery of 
friendship. 



478 iBse^'Qe of MUa^ 

XIL 

THAT HOME IS HOME, THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY. 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no 
homes ; the home of the very poor man, and 
another which we shall speak of presently. 
Crowded places of cheap entertamment, and the 
benches of ale-houses, if they could speak, might 
bear mournful testimony to the first. To them 
the very poor man resorts for an image of the 
home, which he cannot find at home. For a 
starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not 
enough to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers 
of so many shivering children with their mother, 
he finds in the depths of winter always a blazing 
hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer 
by. Instead of the clamors of a wife, made gaunt 
by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance 
beyond the merits of the trifle which he can afford 
to spend. He has companions which his home 
denies him, for the very poor man has no visitors. 
He can look into the goings on of the world, and 
speak a little of politics. At home there are no poli- 
tics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real 
or imaginary, all topics that should expand the 
mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy 
with general existence, are crushed in the absorb- 
ing consideration of food to be obtained for the 
family. Beyond the price of bread, news is sense- 
less and impertinent. At home there is no larder. 
Here there is at least a show of plenty ; and while 
he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before 
the common bars, or munches his humble cold 



IPopulav jfallacles. 479 

viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an 
onion, in a corner, where no one reflects upon his 
poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint 
providing for the landlord and his family. He 
takes an interest in the dressing of it ; and while 
he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, he 
feels that there is such a thing as beef and cab- 
bage, which he was beginning to forget at home. 
All this while he deserts his wife and children. 
But what wife, and what children ? Prosperous 
men, who object to this desertion, image to them- 
selves some clean, contented family like that 
which they go home to. But look at the counte- 
nance of the poor wives who follow and persecute 
their goodman to the door of the public-house, 
which he is about to enter, when something like 
shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did 
not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, 
ground by want, in which every cheerful, every 
conversable lineament has been long effaced by 
misery, — is that a face to stay at home with.? is 
it more a woman or a wild cat ? alas ! it is the face 
of the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon 
him. It can smile no longer. What comforts can 
it share ? what burdens can it lighten ? Oh, 't is 
a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared 
together ! But what if there be no bread in the 
cupboard ? The innocent prattle of his children 
takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the 
children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none 
of the least frightful features in that condition, that 
there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor 
people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not 
bring up their children ; they drag them up. The 
little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in 



4So iBes^^s of Blia. 

their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature 
reflecting- person. No one has time to dandle it ; 
no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe 
it, to toss it up and down, to humor it. There is 
none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can 
only be beaten. It has been prettily said, that 
"a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the 
aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourish- 
ing- ; the return to its little baby-tricks, and 
efforts to engage attention, bitter ceaseless ob- 
jurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a 
coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of 
nurses ; it was a stranger to the patient fondle, 
the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the 
costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand con- 
trivance to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense 
(best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the 
wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that 
puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens 
the passions of young wonder. It was never 
sungto, — no one ever told to it a tale of the nurs- 
ery. It was dragged up, to live or to die, as it 
happened. It had no young dreams. It broke 
at once into the iron realities of life. A child 
exists not for the very poor as any object of dal- 
liance ; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair 
of little hands to be betimes inured to labor. It 
is the rival, till it can be the cooperator for food 
with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diver- 
sion, his solace ; it never makes him young again, 
with recalling his young times. The children of 
the very poor have no young times. It makes 
the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual 
street-talk between a poor woman and her little 
girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a con- 



popular 3fallacie3, 481 

dition rather above the squalid beings which we 
have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of 
nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that 
age) ;^ of the promised sight, or play ; of praised 
sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear- 
starching, of the price of coals, or o'f potatoes. 
The questions of the child, that should be the very 
outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked 
with forecast and melancholy providence. It has 
come to be a woman — before it was a child. It 
has learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it hag- 
gles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, 
sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not rea- 
son to say, that the home of the very poor is no 
home? 

There is yet another home, which v/e are con- 
strained to deny to be one. It has a larder, which 
the home of the poor man wants ; its fireside 
conveniences, of which the poor dream not. But, 
with all this, it is no home. It is — the house of a 
man that is infested with many visitors. May 
we be branded for the veriest churl if we deny our 
heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at 
times exchange their dwelling for our poor roof ! 
It is not of guests that we complain, but of end- 
less, purposeless visitants ; droppers in, as they 
are called. We sometimes wonder from what sky 
they fall It is the very error of the position of 
our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill-calculated, 
being just situate in a medium — a plaguey subur- 
ban midspace — fitted to catch idlers from town or 
country. We are older than we were, and age is 
easily put out of its way. We have fewer sands 
in our glass to reckon upon, and we cannot brook 
to see them drop in endlessly succeeding imperti- 
31 



482 Bgsaies of Blfa, 

nences. At our time of life to be alone some- 
times is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing 
sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age 
manifest themselves in nothing- more strongly 
than in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The 
thing which we are doing we wish to be permitted 
to do. We have neither much knowledge nor 
devices, but there are fewer in the place to which 
we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our 
way, even at a game of ninepins. While youth 
was, we had vast reversions in time future ; we 
are reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to 
economize in that article. We bleed away our 
moments now as hardly as our ducats. We can- 
not bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and 
fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter 
our good time with a friend, who gives us in ex- 
change his own. Herein is the distinction between 
the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter 
takes your good time, and gives you his bad in 
exchange. The guest is domestic to you as your 
good cat, or household bird ; the visitant is your 
fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, 
leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, and 
victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of life 
begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our 
food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be 
nutritive, must be solitary. With difficulty we 
can eat before a guest ; and never understood 
what the relish of public feasting meant. Meats 
have no sapor, nor digestion fair play, in a crowd. 
The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops the 
machine. There is a punctual generation who 
time their calls to the precise commencement of 
your dinner hour — not to eat— but to see you eat. 



IPopular 3faUacle0, 483 

Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel 
that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others 
again show their genius, as we have said, in 
knocking the moment you have just sat down to 
a book. They have a peculiar compassionate 
sneer, with which they ' ' hope that they do not 
interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off 
the next moment to carry their impertinences to 
the nearest student that they can call their friend, 
the tone of the book is spoiled ; we shut the 
leaves, and, with Dante's lovers, read no more 
that day. It were well if the effect of -intrusion 
were simply coextensive with its presence, but 
it mars all the good hours afterwards. These 
scratches in appearance leave an orifice that 
closes not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the 
bravery of friendship," says worthy Bishop Tay- 
lor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who 
are, it may be, loads to their families, but can 
never ease my loads." This is the secret of their 
gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They 
too have homes, which are — no homes. 



XIII. 

THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG. 

'' Good sir, — or madam, as it may be — we 
most willingly embrace the offer of your friend- 
ship. We have long known your excellent quali- 
ties. We have wished to have you nearer to us ; 
to hold you within the very innermost fold of our 
heart. We can have no reserve towards a person 
of your open and noble nature. The frankness 



484 3Bs6a^0 of iBUn. 

of your humor suits us exactly. We have been 
long looking for such a friend. Quick, — let us 
disburden our troubles into each other's bosom, 
— let us make our single joys shine by reduplica- 
tion. But jyap, yap, yap ! what is this confounded 
cur '^. he has fastened his tooth, which is none of 
the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

"It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my 
sake. Here, Test — Test — Test ! " 

*' But he has bitten me." 

"Ay, that he is apt to do till you are better 
acquainted with him. I have had him three years. 
He never bites me." 

Yap, yap, yap ! — " He is at it again." 

"Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does 
not like to be kicked. I expect my dog to be 
treated with all the respect due to myself. " 

"But do you always take him out with you 
when you go a friendship-hunting } " 

"Invariably. 'T is the sweetest, prettiest, 
best-conditioned animal. I call him my test — 
the touchstone by which to try a friend. No one 
can properly be said to love me who does not 
love him. " 

"Excuse us, dear sir, — or madam, aforesaid, 
— if upon further consideration we are obliged to 
decline the otherwise invaluable offer of your 
friendship. We do not like dogs. " 

"Mighty well, sir, you know the conditions, 
you may have worse offers. Come along. Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but 
that, in the intercourse of life, we have had fre- 
quent occasions of breaking off an agreeable 
intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. 
They do not always come in the shape of dogs ; 



popular JFallacfes* 455 

they sometimes wear the more plausible and 
human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, 
my friend's friend, his partner, his wife or his 
children. We could never yet form a friendship, 
— not to speak of more delicate correspondence, 
— however much to our taste, without the inter- 
vention of some third anomaly, some impertinent 
clog affixed to the relation — the understood dog 
in the proverb. The good things of life are not 
to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture, 
— like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed 
to the tail of it. What a delightful companion 

is , if he did not always bring his tall cousin 

with him ! He seems to grow with him, Hke 
some of those double births which we remember 
to have read of with such wonder and delight in 
the old ''Athenian Oracle," where Swift com- 
menced author by writing Pindaric odes (what a 
beginning for him !) upon Sir William Temple. 
There is the picture of the brother, with the little 
brother peeping out at his shoulder ; a species of 
fraternity, which we have no name of kin close 
enough to comprehend. When comes, pok- 
ing his head and shoulder into your room, as if to 
feel his entry, you think, surely you have now 
got him to yourself, — what a three hours' chat we 
shall have ! — but even in the haunch of him, and 
before his diffident body is well disclosed in your 
apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the 
cousin, overpeering his modest kinsman, and sure 
to overlay the expected good talk with his insuffer- 
able procerity of stature, and uncorresponding 
dwarfishness of observation. Misfortunes seldom 
come alone. 'T is hard when a blessing comes 
accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia, with- 



486 3866a^6 ot Blfa. 

out sitting down to chess with her eternal brother? 
or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round 
of her card-playing relations ? — must my friend's 
brethren of necessity be mine also ? must we be 
hand in glove with Dick Selby the parson, or 
Jack Selby the calico-printer, because W. S., who 
is neither, but a ripe wit and critic, has the mis- 
fortune to claim a common parentage with him ? 
Let him lay down his brothers ; and 't is odds but 
we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a 
superflux) to balance the concession. Let F. H. 
lay down his garrulous uncle ; and Honorius dis- 
miss his vapid wife, and superfluous establish- 
ment of six boys — things between boy and man- 
hood — too ripe for play, too raw for conversation 
— that come in, impudently staring their father's 
old friend out of countenance ; and will neither 
aid nor let alone the conference ; that we may 
once more meet upon equal terms, as we were 
wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelor- 
hood. 

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content 
with these canicular probations. Few young 
ladies but in this sense keep a dog. But when 
Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt, or Ruspina 
expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, 
whom she has preposterously taken into her 
bosom to try stinging conclusions upon your con- 
stancy ; they must not complain if the house be 
rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken 
off many excellent matches in her time, if she 
insisted upon all that loved her, loving her dogs 
also. 

An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, 
of Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth .he 



I>opulat 3fallacfe6» 487 

loved and courted a modest appanage to the 
opera, — in truth a dancer, — who had won him 
by the artless contrast between her manners and 
situation. She seemed to him a native violet that 
had been transplanted by some rude accident 
into that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in 
truth, was she less genuine and sincere than she 
appeared to him. He wooed and won this flower. 
Only for appearance' sake, and for due honor to the 
bride's relations, she craved that she might have 
the attendance of her friends and kindred at the 
approaching solemnity. The request was too 
amiable not to be conceded ; and in this solicitude 
for conciliating the good-will of mere relations, 
he found a presage of her superior attentions to 
himself when the golden shaft should have *' killed 
the flock of all affections else." The morning 
came ; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond, — - 
the place appointed for the breakfasting, — accom- 
panied with one English friend, he impatiently 
awaited what reinforcements the bride should 
bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she 
had made. They came in six coaches — the whole 
corps du ballet — French, Italian, men, and women. 
Monsieur de B. , the famous pirouetier of the day, 
led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of 
the Seine. The prima donna had sent her excuse. 
But the first and second buffa were there ; and 

Signor Sc , and Signor Ch , and Madame 

V , with a countless cavalcade besides of 

chorusers, figurantes! at the sight of whom Merry 
afterward declared, that " then for the first time it 
struck him seriously that he was about to marry — a 
dancer." But there was no help for it. Besides, it 
was her day ; these were, in fact, her friends and 



488 3S06as& of :El(a. 

kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was 
all very natural. But when the bride — handing out 
of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure 
than the rest — presented him as her father — the 
gentleman that was to give her away — no less a 
personage than Signor Delpini himself — with a sort 
of pride, as much as to say, See what I have brought 
to do us honor ! — the thought of so extraordinary 
a paternity quite overcame him ; and slipping 
away under some pretence from the bride and her 
motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from 
the backyard to the nearest seacoast, from which, 
shipping himself to America, he shortly after con- 
soled himself with a more congenial match in the 
person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his in- 
tended clown-father, and a bevy of painted buffas 
for bridemaids. 

XIV. 

THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK. 

At what precise minute that little airy musician 
doffs his night gear, and prepares to tune up his 
unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists 
enough to determine. But for a mere human 
gentleman — that has no orchestra business to call 
him from his warm bed to such preposterous exer- 
cises — we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of 
course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the 
very earliest hour at which he can begin to think 
of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we 
say ; for to do it in earnest requires another half 
hour's good consideration. Not but there are 
pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like 



popular f^allades. 489 

gauds, abroad in the world, in summer-time 
especially, some hours before what we have as- 
signed ; which a gentleman may see, as they say, 
only for getting up. But having been tempted 
once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those 
ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. 
We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's 
courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We 
hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to 
waste them upon such observances ; which have 
in them, besides, something Pagan and Persic. 
To say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, 
or got up with the sun (as it is called), to go a 
journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, 
but we suffered for it all the long hours after in 
listlessness and headaches ; Nature herself suffi- 
ciently declaring her sense of our presumption 
in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses 
by the measures of that celestial and sleepless 
traveller. We deny not that there is something 
sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, 
in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering 
to get the start of a lazy world ; to conquer death 
by proxy in his image. But the seeds of sleep 
and mortality are in us ; and we pay usually, in 
strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the 
unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the busy 
part of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, 
are already up and about their occupations, con- 
tent to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, 
we choose to linger a-bed, and digest our dreams. 
It is the very time to recombine the wander- 
ing images, which night in a confused mass 
presented ; to snatch them from forgetfulness ; to 
shape and mould them. Some people have no 



490 IBestk^QB of jeifa* 

good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp 
them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We 
love to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to 
collect the scattered rays of a brighter phan- 
tasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the 
sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to drag into day- 
light a struggling and half-vanishing nightmare ; 
to handle and examine the terrors, or the airy 
solaces. We have too much respect for these 
spiritual communications to let them go so lightly. 
We are not so stupid, or so careless as that Impe- 
rial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a 
seer to remind us of the form of them. They seem 
to us to have as much significance as our waking 
concerns ; or rather to import us more nearly, as 
more nearly we approach by years to the shad- 
owy world, whither we are hastening. We have 
shaken hands with the world's business ; we have 
done with it ; we have discharged ourselves of it. 
Why should we get up .'* we have neither suit to so- 
licit, nor affairs to manage. The drama has shut us 
up at the fourth act. We have nothing here to ex- 
pect, but in a short time a sick-bed, and a dismissal. 
We delight to anticipate death by such shadows 
as night affords. We are already half acquainted 
with ghosts. We were never much in the world. 
Disappointment early struck a dark veil between us 
and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed gray 
before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world 
already appear as but the vain stuff out of which 
dramas are composed. We have asked no more 
of life than what the mimic images in playhouses 
present us with. Even those types have waxed 
fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We 
are superannuated. In this dearth of mundane 



IPopuIar 3fallacfe0» 491 

satisfaction, we contract politic alliances with 
shadows. It is good to have friends at court. 
The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill intro- 
duction to that spiritual presence, upon which, in 
no long time, we expect to be thrown. We are 
trying to know a little of the usages of that col- 
ony ; to learn the language, and the faces we 
shall meet with there, that we may be the less 
awkward at our first coming among them. We 
willingly call a phantom our fellow, as knowing 
we shall soon be of their dark companionship. 
Therefore, we cherish dreams. We try to spell 
in them the alphabet of the invisible world ; and 
think we know already, how it shall be with us. 
These uncouth shapes which, while we clung to 
flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become fa- 
miliar. We feel attenuated into their meagre es- 
sences, and have given the hand of half-way ap- 
proach to incorporeal being. We once thought 
life to be something; but, it has unaccountably 
fallen from us before its time. Therefore we 
choose to dally with visions. The sun has no 
purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we 
get up ? 

XV. 

THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB. 

We could never quite understand the philoso- 
phy of this arrangement, or the wisdom of our 
ancestors in sending us for instruction to these 
woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when it is dark, 
has nothing to do but to shut his silly eyes, and 
sleep if he 'can. Man found out long sixes. Hail, 



492 B66a^6 of JElla. 

candle-light ! without disparagement to sun or 
moon, the kindliest luminary of the three, — if we 
may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, 
mild viceroy of the moon ! We love to read, 
talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep by candle-light. 
Candles are everybody's sun and moon. This is 
our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, 
what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors 
have spent, wintering in caves and unillumined 
fastnesses. They must have lain about and 
grumbled at one another in the dark. What rep- 
artees could have passed when you must have 
felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's 
cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This ac- 
counts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It 
has a sombre cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived 
from the tradition of those unlanterned nights. 
Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how 
they saw to pick up a pin, if they had any pins. 
How did they sup ? what a melange of chance 
carving they must have made of it ! — here one 
had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's 
shoulder — there another had dipped his scooped 
palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, when he medi- 
tated right mare's milk. There is neither good 
eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in 
these civilized times, has never experienced this, 
when at some economic table he has commenced 
dining after dusk, and waited for the flavor till 
the lights came } The senses absolutely give and 
take reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal 
in the dark } or distinguish Sherris from pure 
Malaga ? Take away the candle from the smok- 
ing man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes he 
knows that he is still smoking, but he knows it 



popular lfallacle0, 493 

only by an inference ; till the restored light, com- 
ing in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses 
the full aroma. Then how he redoubles his 
puffs ! how he burnishes ! There is absolutely 
no such thing as reading but by a candle. We 
have tried the affectation of a book at noonday 
in gardens and in sultry arbors, but it was labor 
thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam 
come about you, hovering and teasing, like so 
many coquettes, that will have you all to them- 
selves, and are jealous of your abstractions. By 
the midnight taper the writer digests his medita- 
tions. By the same light we must approach to 
their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the 
odor. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the 
influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its 
birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted 
works — 

Things that were bom when none but the still night 
And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes. 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the im- 
ages, the crude material, but for the fine shapings, 
the true turning and filing (as mine author hath 
it), they must be content to hold their inspiration of 
the candle. The mild internal light that reveals 
them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out 
in the sunshine. Night and silence call out the 
starry fancies. Milton's " Morning Hymn in 
Paradise," we would hold a good wager, was 
penned at midnight, and Taylor's rich description 
of a sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. Even 
ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune 
our best-measured cadences (Prose has her ca- 
dences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drow- 



494 JEssass of J6Ua, 

sier watchman " blessing- the doors," or the wild 
sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier 
speculation than we have yet attempted courts our 
endeavors. We would indite some thing- about 
the Solar System, — Betty ^ brifig the candles. 



XVI. 

THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 

We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to 
a man's friends, and to all that have to do with 
him ; but whether the condition of the man him- 
self is so much to be deplored, may admit of a 
question. We can speak a little to it, being our- 
selves but lately recovered — we whisper it in con- 
fidence, reader — out of a long and desperate fit of 
the sullens. Was the cure a blessing ? The con- 
viction which wrought it came too clearly to leave 
a Scruple of the fanciful injuries — for they were 
mere fancies — which had provoked the humor. 
But the humor itself was too self-pleasing, while 
it lasted — we know how bare we lay ourselves in 
the confession — to be abandoned all at once with 
the grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs 
which we know to have been imaginary ; and for 

our old acquaintance N , whom we find to 

have been a truer friend than we took him for, 
we substitute some phantom — a Caius or a Titius 
— as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our 
yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying 
to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect, to 
forego the idea of having been ill-used and con- 
tumaciously treated by an old friend. The first 



IPopular ^fallacies, 495 

thing to aggrandize a man in his own conceit, is 
to conceive of himself as neglected. There let 
him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to de- 
prive him of the most tickling morsel vvdthin the 
range of self-complacency. No flattery can come 
near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of 
an injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks all 
his friends in a conspiracy to depress and under- 
value him. There is a pleasure (we sing not to 
the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the 
world calls joy — a deep, enduring satisfaction 
in the depths, where the superficial seek it not, 
of discontent. Were we to recite one half of 
this mystery, — which we were let into by our late 
dissatisfaction, all the world would be in love with 
disrespect ; we should wear a slight for a bracelet, 
and neglects and contumacies would be the only 
matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious 
book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery 
is unpalatable only in the commencement. The 
first sting of a suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out 
of that wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so 
difficult, there are balm and honey to be extracted. 
Your friend passed you on such or such a day, — 
having in his company one that you conceived 
worse than ambiguously disposed toward you, — 
passed you in the street without notice. To be sure 
he is something shortsighted ; and it was in your 
power to have accosted him. But facts and sane 
inferences are trifles to a true adept in the science 
of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; and 

S , who was with him, must have been the 

cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it 
may. But have patience. Go home and make 
the worst of it, and you are a made man from 



496 Bssa^s of BKa. 

this time. Shut yourself up, and — -rejectingf, as 
an enemy to your peace, every whispered sugges- 
tion that but insinuates there may be a mistake — 
reflect seriously upon the many lesser instances 
which you had begun to perceive, in proof of your 
friend's disaffection towards you. None of them 
singly was much to the purpose, but the aggre- 
gate weight is positive ; and you have this last 
affront to clench them ; thus far the process is any 
thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes 
in the comparative faculty. You conjure up all 
the kind feelings you have had for your friend ; 
what you have been to him, and what you 
would have been to him, if he would have suf- 
fered you ; how you defended him in this or 
that place ; and his good name — his literary repu- 
tation, and so forth, was always dearer to you 
than your own ! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns 
towards him. You could weep tears of blood, 
but for a restraining pride. How say you ! do 
you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort } some 
allay of sweetness in the bitter waters .? Stop not 
here, nor penuriously cheat yourself of your re- 
versions. You are on vantage ground. Enlarge 
your speculations, and take in the rest of your 
friends, as a spark kindles more sparks. Was 
there one among them who has not to you proved 
hollow, false, slippery as water? Begin to think 
that the relation itself is inconsistent with mor- 
tality. That the very idea of friendship, with its 
component parts, as honor, fidelity, steadiness, 
exists but in your single bosom. Image yourself 
to yourself, as the only possible friend in a world 
incapable of that communion. Now the gloom 
thickens. The little star of self-love twinkles, 



f>opular afallacieB. 497 

that is to encourage you through deeper glooms 
than this. You are not yet at the half-point of 
your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half 
sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general 
(as these circles in the mind will spread to infinity) 
reflect with what strange injustice you have been 
treated in quarters where (setting gratitude and 
the expectation of friendly returns aside as chi- 
meras) you pretended no claim beyond justice, the 
naked due of all men. Think the very idea of 
right and fit fled from the earth, or your breast 
the solitary receptacle of it, till you have swelled 
yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the other 
being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends 
and the world aforesaid. To grow bigger every 
moment in your own conceit, and the world to 
lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense of your 
species ; to judge the world — this is the acme and 
supreme point of your mystery, — these the true 
Pleasures of Sulkiness. We profess no more of 
this grand secret than what ourself experimented 
on one rainy afternoon in the last week sulking 
in our study. We had proceeded to the penulti- 
mate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, 
where the consideration of benefit forgot is about 
to merge in the meditation of general injustice — • 
when a knock at the door was followed by the 
entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us 
in the morning (for we will now confess the case 
our own), an accidental oversight, had given rise 
to so much agreeable generalization ! To morti- 
fy us still more, and take down the whole flatter- 
ing superstructure which pride had piled upon 
neglect, he had brought in his hand the identical 

S , in whose favor we had suspected him of 

32 



498 j£em^6 ot jglfa, 

conttimacy, Asseveratton were needless, where 
the frank manner of them both was convictive of 
the injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied 
that they perceived our embarrassment, but were 
too proud, or something else, to confess the secret 
of it. We had been but too lately in the condition 
of the noble patient in Argos : 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragdEdos^ 
In vacus laetu» sessor plausorque theatre — 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason 
against the friendly hands that cured us — 

Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 



THE END, 



Zbc Bltemus Xibrac^. 

A choice collection of Standard and Popular books, 
handsomely printed on fine paper, from large clear type, 
and bound in handy volume size in faultless styles : 

1. Sesame and Lilies. Three lectures. By John 

Ruskin. 

I. Of King's Treasuries. 
II. Of Queen's Gardens. 
III. Of the Mystery of Life. 

2. The Pleasures of Life. By Sir John Lubbock, 

M. P., F. R. S., D. C. L., LL. D. Complete 
in one volume. 

3. The Essays of Lord Francis Bacon, with Memoirs 

and Notes. 

4. Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Anto- 

ninus. Translated by George Long. 

5. A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with 

the Encheridion. Translated by George Long. 

6. Essays, First Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

7. Essays, Second Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

8. Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell. 

9. Of the Imitation of Christ. Four books com- 

plete in one volume. By Thomas A Kempis. 

10. The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. 

11. Letters, Sentences and Maxims. By Lord Ches- 

terfield. " Masterpieces of good taste, good 
writing, and good sense." 

12. The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. By Jerome 

K. Jerome. A book for an Idle Holiday. 

13. Tales from Shakespeare. By Charles and Mary 

Lamb, with an introduction by Rev. Alfred 
Ainger, M. A. 



tTbe Bltemus TLibtnt^. 

14. Natural Law in the Spiritual World. By Henry 

Drummond, F. R. S. E., F. G. S. The rela- 
tions of Science and Religion clearly expounded. 

15. Addresses. By Henry Drummond, F. R. S. E.,- 

F. G. S. The Greatest Thing in the World ; 
PaxVobiscum; The Changed Life; How to 
Learn How; Dealing with Doubt; Prepara- 
tion for Learning ; What is a Christian ? The 
Study of the Bible ; A Talk on Books. 

16. " My Point of View." Representative selections 

from the works of Professor Drummond. By 
William Shepard. 

17. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

18. Representative Men. Seven lectures. By Ralph 

Waldo Emerson. 

19. My King and His Service. By Frances Ridley 

Havergal. Containing — My King; Royal 
Commandments; Royal Bounty; Royal Invi- 
tation ; Loyal Responses. 

20. Reveries of a Bachelor. By Ik Marvel, A Book 

of the Heart. 

21. The House of the Seven Gables. By Nathaniel 

Hawthorne, 

22. Dream Life, By Ik Marvel. A Companion 

volume to Reveries of a Bachelor. 

23. Rab and His Friends, Marjorie Fleming, etc. 

By John Brown. 

24. Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. 

25. Sartor Resartus. By Thomas Carlyle. 

26. Heroes and Hero Worship. By Thomas Carlyle, 



^be Bltemus Xibrarg* 

27. Ethics of the Dust. By John Ruskin. 

28. A Window in Thrums. By J, M. Barrie. 

29. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel 

Hawthorne. 

30. Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
Cloth, various handsome designs stamped in gold and 

^"^^^' • . 75 cents. 

Half-crushed levant, super-extra hand-finished, gold 
tops, untrimmed edges, sewn with silk. . $1.50. 

Half genuine English calf, super- extra hand-finished, 
gold tops, untrimmed edges, sewn with silk, . $i.yS' 

HENRY ALTEMUS, Publisher, Philadelphia. 



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